Barmy Britain (17 page)
Authors: Jack Crossley
- What are chiropodists’ favourite crisps? Cheese and bunion.
- Why did the man take his budgie to the bookies? So that it could have a flutter.
- What do you do with a sick bee? Take it to the waspital.
- What did the liver say to the kidney after a night out? ‘I feel offal’.
- What is red, white and blue and flaps in a tree? A Union Jackdaw.
Daily Mail
A Chippenham couple celebrated Christmas 2007 with the world’s oldest imitation tree. The 120 year-old miniature cost 6d (that’s two and a half p) and has been handed down in the family since 1886. ‘It amazes me to think that it has been appearing every Christmas since Victorian times. We will be passing it on to our son’, says Janet Parker.
The Times
Forget the turkey. In parts of the Outer Hebrides the Christmas bird of choice is the guga (or baby gannet). This unusual festive seabird is a
highly-prized
delicacy and some are sent around the world to expatriates. Traditionally eaten with boiled potatoes and no trimmings, preparation involves scrubbing off the salt and soaking overnight. Old hands suggest cooking the guga outdoors ‘because of the dreadful smell’. It is said to taste like a cross between duck and mackerel.
Daily Telegraph
The Pentagon once considered developing a weapon that would cause flatulence. It was to be called the ‘Who? Me?’ device.
Reader’s Digest
John Murrell, of Cambridge, was astonished when a bank turned him down because he exceeded their maximum age limit. And even more astonished by a letter saying that he could reapply ‘…should your circumstances change in the next six months’.
The Times
D. Kehoe, of Clayton-le-Moors, Lancashire spotted in a letter from the Post Office:
‘When we closed your account the balance was
£
0.00. We will look after this for you until you claim it’.
Daily Mail
D
aily Telegraph
readers complained about people not sending thank you letters and David Greenway, of Andover, Hampshire wrote about his grandmother: ‘She would send half a ten shilling note, and only when you had written to thank her did you get the other half’.
Daily Telegraph
Some of the strange requests for money received by the National Lottery:
- To respray a Cortina
- Buy a pub
- Set up a dinosaur farm
- Publish evidence to prove Einstein and Isaac Newton were wrong
Independent on Sunday
Noël Coward wrote to one of his critics: ‘Sir, I am seated in the smallest room in the house. Your review is in front of me. In a moment it will be behind me.’
Independent
Homer Simpson, pot-bellied head of America’s most dysfunctional family, has made it into the
Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations
– alongside such literary luminaries as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. One of his chosen quotes:
‘Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try.’
Sun
Joan Rivers was in caustic form at the finals of Miss Great Britain. ‘It’s not just about surface beauty. We’ve got 50 girls here. Two of them even know their names’.
Asked for beauty tips she said: ‘Wear a really heavy bag over your face. The older you get the longer the bag has to get.’
The Times
People from Cork have a reputation of looking upon themselves as superior to their fellow countrymen, and have been subjected to a
Book of Corkmen Jokes
. (By Des McHale, Mercier Press). It opens with:
A Corkman reported his car stolen and the police asked if he had got a good look at the thief.
‘No’, said the Corkman, ‘but I’ve got his number’.
The Times
Every month the UK Intellectual Property Office receives around 500 inventions, and the Daily Telegraph reports on some wacky ones:
- A contraption to facilitate the birth of a child by centrifugal force. The mother-to-be is strapped to a table that spins around at high speed. The baby is forced out and caught in a net.
- A ladder to let spiders climb out of the bath.
- An airman’s helmet with fitted pop-up parachute.
- A cat flap with a colour sensor which would admit the designer’s ginger tom, but block the passage of his neighbour’s black moggie.
Daily Telegraph
James Bond actor Daniel Craig was asked what it was like being an international star.
He replied: ‘Well, I get to hang around with all the best women, drive the fastest cars, travel in speedboats and private jets, sleep in the best hotels and have beautiful women pursuing me from all over the world… It’s absolutely bloody awful.’
Daily Mail
My friend’s four-year-old girl announced very loudly at the ballet: ‘Look Mum, that man is hiding his sweeties where I hide mine.’
Mrs. S. Smith, Uxbridge.
Daily Mail
Guardian
diarist Jon Henley reports on two impressive toilet seats:
- The Kohler C3 which has cleansing wands, heated seat with three temperature settings, warm air fan, lighted bowl, deodorizer, Quiet-Close seat and full remote control.
- The Clean Seat Matic with Automatic
Infrared-Activated
Voice Chip, which not only lines itself with paper but reminds users to flush it and broadcasts up to three minutes of advertisements.
Guardian
During the Dunkirk retreat Major General Lord Burnham encountered his son on the beach. He greeted him with: ‘I see you failed to shave this morning’.
W. F. Deedes in the
Daily Telegraph
At the height of a gale, the harbourmaster radioed a coastguard and asked him to estimate the wind speed. He replied he was sorry, but he didn’t have a gauge. However, if it was any help, the wind had just blown his Land Rover off the cliff.
Aberdeen Evening Express / BBC News Quiz
Commenting on a complaint from a Mr Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, ‘We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It’s possible Mr Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.’
Daily Telegraph / BBC News Quiz
A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented, ‘This sort of thing is all too common’.
The Times
If you are pleasantly surprised at being able to squeeze into 32inch waist jeans – don’t celebrate too soon. Some fashion companies flatter their customers – both men and women – by understating the true waistline.
Example: jeans claiming to be a slim-fit 30 can be actually 36. It’s known as ‘vanity sizing’.
Daily Mail
While we are being urged to help save the planet by turning off the TV standby, Les Deakin, of Warrington, writes: ‘What about the rest? There is the microwave, oven clock, refrigerator, freezer, burglar alarm, doorbell, computer, bedroom TV, DVD, Freeserve box, porch light, central heating controller, radio alarm clock and the Economy 7 timer’.
Mr Deakin feels that by the time you have gone round switching them all off, it could well be time to get up and put them on again.
The Times
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize (awarded for deliberately bad writing) is named after the author who began his novel with the immortal words ‘It was a dark and stormy night’. The 2007 winner of the Adventure Category was:
‘As the hippo’s jaws clamped on Henry’s body he noted its teeth were badly in need of a clean, preferably with one of those electric sonic
tooth-brushes
, and he reflected that his name would be immortalised by his unusual death, since hippo killings are not a daily occurrence, at least not in the high street of Chipping Sodbury.’
Tim Lafferty, Woking, Surrey.
Independent on Sunday
It’s a myth that women are chatterboxes who never let a man get a word in edgeways. The most prolific talker during a series of tests was a man who yakked his way through 47,000 words a day. The most effusive woman managed a mere 40,000.
- David Beckham speaks at 174 words a minute.
- Dame Helen Mirren – 153 words a minute.
- Peter O’Sullivan, racing commentator – 238.
- JK Rowling – 169.
- Churchill spoke at 111 words a minute.
The Times
The organisers of the Two Moors music festival in Devon spent two years raising £26,000 to buy a Bosendorfer piano – which is to a pianist what a Stradivarius is to a string player. But, when being unloaded from its lorry, the piano slipped and crashed 8ft down an embankment.
The noise made by the falling Rolls-Royce of grand pianos was described as being like ‘ten honky tonk pianos being hit by mallets’.
The Times, Telegraph, Mail, Guardian
Rock singer and millionaire green queen Sheryl Crow wants us to save the planet by using only one sheet of toilet paper per visit to the loo.
Jan Moir explodes: ‘One! Quite how this diktat is to be policed is anyone’s guess.’
Daily Telegraph
To help save the planet from free plastic bags Sainsbury’s offered an iconic ‘I’m Not A Plastic Bag’ bag. Rachel Thomas, of Tunbridge Wells, queued up to get hers and the lady at the checkout kindly put it in a plastic carrier bag and wished her a good day.
The Times
In May 2007 the
Daily Telegraph
celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Wayne, who embodies almost everything Hollywood now considers politically incorrect – a tough talking, red-blooded man’s man, pro-war patriot and, in his own words, a ‘right wing conservative extremist’. His real name was Marion Robert Morrison and his quotes include:
‘A man’s godda do what a man’s godda do’
‘Women have the right to work wherever they want as long as they have the dinner ready when you get home’.
Daily Telegraph
When the Cutty Sark was ravaged by fire at Greenwich in May 2007 every paper carried pages and pages of the clipper’s glorious history from the moment it slid into the Clyde in 1869. The Times recorded how she was a modern vessel in her day. ‘She had lavatories at a time when answering a call of nature was usually done by squatting over the ship’s side.’
The Times
In August 2007 a postcard was delivered to Anthony Ely, of Winthorpe, Lincolnshire, along with an apology for delay. It was posted in August 1908.
The Times
Sherwood Forest was astir when it was revealed that a blockbuster film was being made portraying the Sheriff of Nottingham as a good guy trying to keep the peace while Robin Hood was just some young thug in a Lincoln-green hoodie.
The
Guardian
harrumphed: ‘Robin a baddie? Lay off our legend, Hollywood.’
Guardian
In 1997 David Ashcroft won
£
12.3 million on the National Lottery and he said at the time that his win would not change his way of life.
Ten years later the Daily Mail reported that David, 40, still lives in the same three bedroom terraced house in Liverpool with his parents. He still works as a furniture restorer – the job he trained for as a teenager. But he did buy a new van, double glazed the family home, and has a caravan in North Wales where they go on holiday. He has never travelled abroad, does not drink or smoke – but has the occasional cream cake.
Daily Mail
In June 2007 London celebrated the 200th anniversary of the arrival of street gas lamps. Lamp attendant Martin Caulfield was there lighting a lamp near Big Ben wearing a traditional bowler hat. He is one of London’s six lamplighters still on the job.
Daily Telegraph
A survey revealed some of the oddball items left behind in hotel rooms:
- A stuffed crocodile
- A wooden leg
- A pet dog
- A racing bike worth
£
19,000
The survey did not reveal why a carrot found in a bed was wrapped in cling film.
Independent on Sunday
A newly unearthed copy of a 1694 volume entitled
The Ladies Dictionary – Being a General Entertainment of the Fair Sex
, is described as a virtual Cosmopolitan of its time. It dismisses thin women as ‘scragged, sad-looking and not comely’ and says ‘a painted face is enough to destroy the reputation of her that uses it’.
The Times
Angela Kenny, of East Kilbride, Scotland – Britain’s biggest Lottery winner – went shopping soon after picking up
£
35.4 million… At a discount centre which slashes prices on brand names and sells cheap seconds.
Sun
A 51-year-old amateur sailor from Newquay, Cornwall, capsized his catamaran dozens of times, costing the RNLI thousands of pounds in rescue missions.
His boat was called Mischief and the RNLI called him Captain Calamity.
They advised the accident prone enthusiast to find a new hobby.
Daily Telegraph
Owen Jenkins, of Lowestoft, Suffolk, writes about arriving with a small band of sailors at Cork railway station on a Saturday night soon after the Second World War. They asked for the time of the last train to Cobh and a guard said:
‘Well now, about what time would you lads be wanting to go?’
‘About half-past nine’, they replied.
‘Right then. Come and tell me when you are all aboard and then we’ll be off.’
The Times
Actress Sienna Miller discussed her eco-credentials and said: ‘It’s impossible in my industry to not travel… I don’t think I can stop flying at the moment, but I can start having less baths.’
Independent on Sunday