Barmy Britain (10 page)
Authors: Jack Crossley
A man wanting a happy marriage
should keep his chequebook open and his
mouth shut…
Divorcing couples are now spending more time fighting over who gets custody of the family pet than over furniture or the hi-fi.
Independent on Sunday
It was reported that Whitney Houston’s song ‘I Will Always Love You’ is the top choice for the first dance for newly weds.
Duncan Mackinven, of Romford, Essex, says he can only assume that they have never listened to the lyrics, which include ‘We both know I’m not what you need’.
Daily Telegraph
In an article headlined 12 W
AYS TO
E
NJOY LIFE FOR
L
ONGER
the 8th item was:
Nag Your Husband:
Gerald drops off to sleep after lunch and says ‘Winston Churchill always had a power nap’. I say ‘Yes, well he had power and a country to run. All you’ve got to remember is to take the bins out.’
Women who nag their husbands are less likely to die of heart disease. Do you need another reason?
‘It’s fun.’
Daily Telegraph
Spotted in a parish magazine by Mrs Jean Gelder, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire: ‘Irving Benson and Jessica Carter were married on October 24. So ends a friendship that began in their schooldays’.
Daily Mail
Rosemary Heaversedge, of Shrewsbury, reports that there was a time when ‘Strangers in the Night’ was the song played for the bride and groom.
Daily Telegraph
Groucho Marx on men: ‘A husband wanting a happy marriage should keep his cheque book open and his mouth shut’.
James Thurber on women: ‘I hate them because they always know where things are’.
W. C. Fields said that a woman drove him to drink and he didn’t have the decency to thank her.
Nancy Astor said to Winston Churchill: ‘If I were married to you I’d put poison in your coffee’. Churchill replied: ‘If you were my wife I would drink it’.
Mae West said: ‘His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork’.
Extracts from
The Wicked Wit of Insults
by Maria Leach (Michale O’Mara £5.99)
Daily Mail
Referring to a device which prevents drivers exceeding the speed limit, Richard Fuller, of Salisbury, wrote: ‘I have one. We have been married for 24 years.’
The Times
Cherie Blair, wife of the former Prime Minister, tells of the day he proposed: ‘We went on holiday in 1979 to Tuscany… we were leaving to come home and I was cleaning the toilet… I was on my knees and he just announced that maybe we should get married. It was terribly romantic.’
Sunday Telegraph
The three Douglas sisters (Agnes, 87, Peggy, 86, and Mary, 84, originally of Sittingbourne, Kent) have clocked up 185 years of wedded bliss. They have been congratulated by the Queen for all reaching their diamond wedding anniversaries, and Mary said: ‘I could manage another 60 years’.
Daily Mail
Joseph Smith played ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ on the harmonium while one of his wives was drowning in the next room.
Keith Waterhouse ‘looking back on days of
perfect murder’ in the
Daily Mail
In the first year of our marriage I sent my husband a Valentine. He spent all day trying to guess who had sent it. In 45 years I have never sent him another. Elizabeth Ditton, Suffolk.
The Times
Britain’s ‘ugliest granny’ celebrated 60 years of marriage in 2007. Kath Taylor, 81, was twice crowned World Gurning Champion at Cumbria’s Egremont Crab Fair. Her husband James, 84, reckons she is a stunner and says: ‘She’s a little beauty, even when pulling those funny faces.’
His love did not wane when Kath lost her teeth and took up gurning. ‘It’s fun,’ she says, ‘but you can get tired of frightening children in the street.’
Sun
In 2007 James Mason (93) and Peggy Clarke (84) of Devon became Britain’s oldest wedding couple – with a combined age of 177. They had both agreed that there was no point in a long engagement.
Mason said it was a perfect match: ‘She was after my body and I was after her money. And I’ve always wanted to marry a younger woman.’
They met at a Paignton day centre where he began the romance with the bewhiskered old time favourite: ‘Do you come here often?’
Three days later he popped the question, ‘But not on bended knees because of his creaky joints’, reported the
Guardian
.
Daily Mail
Writing about attacks on the clergy, the Venerable George Austin of York reported: ‘I once received a death threat from a man because I had given him 25 years of misery by conducting his marriage service’.
The Times
Police received a 999 call from a husband complaining that his wife would not cook him an evening meal because she was decorating.
Daily Mirror
Ten days after her wedding, a 20-year-old Arbroath bride found her husband in bed with her 44-year-old mother. Divorce followed and then the husband married the mother – with his first wife acting as bridesmaid. Bride number one said: ‘He never apologised, but everyone makes mistakes. I’ve lost a husband, but gained a father.
Independent on Sunday
‘Wedding dress size 16 –
£
75. Worn once. Big mistake.’ Seen in Kettering local paper.
Daily Mail
‘Beautiful ivory wedding dress, size 10, never worn due to pregnancy.’
Rugby Observer
With many more people going in for serial monogamy these days, the greeting card industry has had to change. There are cards addressed to ‘dad and his wife’ and to ‘mother and her partner’.
Independent on Sunday
A Yorkshireman asked his wife where she would like to be buried. She replied: ‘On top o’ thee.’
Bernard Breckon, Beverley, Yorkshire.
The Times
Growing numbers of bridegrooms are choosing women to be their ‘best man’. A best woman is considered to be less likely to organise a stag night that ends up with a plastered groom being tied to a lamppost minus his trousers. She is less likely to deliver a speech revealing the groom’s more outrageous bachelor indiscretions. But she must not try to look more pretty than the bride and must not let the bride see her trying on the wedding ring.
The Times
A man filed for divorce because his wife left him this note: ‘Gone to the bridge club. There’ll be a recipe for your dinner at seven o’clock on Channel 2’.
Reader’s Digest
It was reported that women spend a total of three years in their lifetime dressing up to go out – but it turned out to be nothing new. John Dyer, of Otham, Kent, recalled that Gladstone said that he was able to read
War and Peace
in the time that he had spent waiting for Mrs Gladstone to put on her hat.
Daily Telegraph
Jane Morrison, of Crieff, Perth and Kinross, writes of her father who was a GP on a Hebridean island. A crofter complained of a painful spine and was asked if he had undertaken any strenuous activities. âI suppose,' he said, âit could have been when I lifted a sack of peat on to the wife's back.'
Reader's Digest
Lottery winners Tony and Greta Dodd (67 and 69 years old) of Wallasey, Merseyside, knew exactly what to do first with their £2,438,155 prize. Get four new knee joints.
Daily Mail
Two patients a week leave hospital with surgical instruments still inside them. The list of lost items includes swabs, a catheter, a metal clip and a contraceptive coil.
Pensioner Victor Hutchinson spent three months with a two-inch scalpel blade in his chest after a heart operation in Plymouth.
Daily Mail
The NHS surgery used by Brian Binns, of Loughborough, Leicestershire, has a wall calendar supplied by the local undertaker.
Daily Telegraph
News of yet another cure for baldness hit the headlines on 17 May 2007, and The Times reminded readers that Hippocrates recommended a blend of pigeon droppings, cumin, horseradish and beetroot. The Ancient Egyptians had a remedy which included toe of dog and hoof of ass.
The Times
Back in the 1940s Jenny Parkin's grandfather suffered a coronary thrombosis at the age of 50. His doctor told him to give up golf and carry on smoking.
He followed the advice and lived to be 93.
The Times
After being told that he had only 12 months to live John Brandrick, of Newquay, Cornwall, gave up his job, stopped paying his mortgage, helped out his family financially, gave away his clothes and enjoyed spending the rest of his life savings. He planned his funeral, keeping just one suit, a shirt and a tie to be buried in. He then learned that he had non-fatal pancreatitis and not pancreatic cancer â but was penniless and forced to sell his house.
His verdict on the past 12 months? Get a second opinion.
Daily Telegraph
The 1654 book prompted the
Independent on Sunday
to look at other âcures' for baldness which have cropped up over the years:
- Former Labour MP Bryan Gould claimed that hanging upside down (increasing the flow of blood to the scalp) led to a 50% regrowth on his receding bonce.
- Hippocrates recommended a blend of pigeon droppings, cumin, horseradish and beetroot.
- Queen Victoria was known to drink silver birch wine, made from the rising sap, to cure her baldness.
Independent on Sunday
According to
The Path-Way to Health,
published back in 1654 when Oliver Cromwell was ruling England, it seems that no self-respecting male's medicine chest was complete without supplies of cat dung, snail blood and chicken droppings. They were recommended as remedies for everything from bad breath to baldness and fatness to flatulence.
The advice for getting rid of unwanted hair was to âtake hard cat dung, beat it to a powder, temper it with strong vinegar, then use it to wash the place where you would have no hair grow.'
For curing stinking breath wash the mouth out with water and vinegar followed by a concoction of aniseed, mint and cloves sodden in wine.
For a stench under the armpits, pluck away the hairs and wash with white wine and rosewater.
Going bald? Try rubbing in some chicken dung and/or snail blood.
Daily Mail
A Perthshire health centre was accused of insensitivity after issuing cards to patients that included an advert for the town's funeral director.
The Times
If you think today's adverts need to be taken with a pinch of salt, the
Daily Mail
reproduces some glorious golden oldies:
- Groves Tonic âMakes Children and Adults as Fat as Pigs' â 1890s
- Joy's Cigars Cure Asthma (with a picture of a sophisticated lady puffing on one) â 1890s
- The Doctors' Special Rum (Prescribed by the Medical Profession) â 1900
- Whiteway's Woodbine Blend Dry Cider for Rheumatism and Gout â 1920
- A 6d bottle of Mason's Wine Essence will make One Gallon of Delicious Wine for Children's Parties â 1900
- And a very pretty girl with a low cut dress advertises Page Woodcock's Wind Pills.
Daily Mail
The doctor giving D. S. Busfield, of Yelverton, Devon, a medical examination admitted that he found taking exercise boring. He said that, if he felt the need, he took his gin and tonic standing up.
Daily Telegraph
Message seen on a wall at a Middlesex Hospital: âThe only difference between this place and the Titanic is that they had a band.'
Guardian
In the Colonial Police Service our medical adviser insisted hands should be washed before having a pee, on the grounds that âyou should know where your willy has been, but not always your hands'. John S. Wright, Macclesfield, Cheshire.
Independent
A student who rushed for help after seeing a woman fall down the steps of Leeds General Infirmary was told by the Accident and Emergency staff to phone for an ambulance.
Yorkshire Evening Post
Recent letters on the marking of body parts before surgery reminded me of my husband's bunion operation. With a felt-tip pen a nurse drew an arrow near his ankle âto show the surgeon which foot to operate on.' My husband pointed out that he actually only had the one leg.
Helen Hawes, Tunbridge Wells.
Daily Telegraph
A man went into Leeds Infirmary for a heart by-pass. Part of a leg vein was removed to replace a blocked artery. This meant that a tattoo on his leg, which used to read âI love women' ended up reading âI love men'.
Independent on Sunday
In one recent year almost one million people were admitted to UK hospitals as a result of unfortunate and often unusual incidents (costing the NHS some
£
1billion). Department of Health statistics show that:
- 51 people were bitten or crushed by reptiles
- 22 were bitten by a rat
- 190 had âcome into contact with plant thorns, spines and sharp leaves'
- 369 had fallen foul of lawnmowers
- 3,038 were injured through âcontact with a
non-powered
hand drill' - 389 were admitted after crashing their bicycle into a stationary object
- 31 children under 14 got on a motorcycle and crashed into a car
- 24 were burnt by âignition or melting of nightwear'
- 754 were scalded by hot tap water
- 189 needed treatment after âforeign objects' were accidentally left in their bodies during surgical and medical care.
- Lightning struck 65 times â but not in the same place twice.
Times / Evening Standard
As a medical student I was baffled by the abbreviation BNOR, but discovered from a nurse in the obstetric unit that it meant: âBowels not opened regularly.'
Bernard Gaston, Hale, Cheshire.
The Times
As a retired vet I have also come across useful acronyms. D.M.I.T.O stands for âdog more intelligent than owner.'
Mike Godsal, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
The Times
A West of England ambulance service, concerned about Britons overeating, ordered an ambulance capable of carrying patients weighing 55 stone.
Independent on Sunday
A disabled woman who says she was healed miraculously after years in a wheelchair could not get her disability payments cancelled because the government does not recognise miracles.
Daily Telegraph