Barmy Britain (12 page)
Authors: Jack Crossley
Passengers were delayed for a total of 2,434 years at Heathrow in 2006.
Daily Mail
Giles Oakley, of London, writes of a white passenger hurling racist abuse at a black baggage handler. Another passenger congratulated the handler for his dignified forbearance and was told: ‘That’s no problem. That passenger is flying to Berlin. His baggage is going to Johannesburg.’
Guardian
A British railway service once famously made this excuse when snow delayed its trains: ‘It was the wrong kind of snow.’
They matched this in 2007 after a French TGV train clocked up a record 357mph record with: ‘Well, France is three times bigger than Britain.’
Sunday Telegraph
Joseph Rowntree (1836-1925), the Quaker philanthropist and cocoa manufacturer, once, by mistake, travelled in a first class rail coach having bought a second class ticket.
Stricken by his conscience, the next time he travelled he bought a first class ticket and travelled second class.
(Steven Burkeman, Chair, The Rowntree Society.)
Guardian
A service called MayDayCards will use their network of airline staff to carry your handwritten postcards to exotic and exclusive locations.
So, reports the
Independent on Sunday
, ‘while you are staying at Mrs McGurgle’s guest house in Bognor Regis, your friends think you are lounging by a pool in the Maldives.’
Independent on Sunday
Last week, at Heathrow, I saw a friend off to Nigeria. I then joined the queues of traffic to make my way to south Devon. My friend reached her destination first. Christopher Jolly of Chigwell, Essex.
Daily Telegraph
‘We apologise for the lack of scenery’. Announcement on a train stuck in a tunnel in Sussex.
The Times
Excuses for late trains have become a national joke in Britain. They include autumn leaves making the tracks too slippery and trains unable to cope with ‘the wrong kind of snow’. Long suffering commuters enjoyed this one from a London Underground driver: ‘Your delay this evening is caused by the line controller suffering from elbow and backside syndrome – not knowing his elbow from his backside. I’ll let you know any further information as soon as I am given any.’
Guardian
In 1909, the 270-mile rail trip from London to Fishguard in North Wales took four hours and 28 minutes and cost
£
1.75. Now it takes five hours and costs
£
41.
Evening Standard
In a typical city centre almost a third of the traffic consists of people driving around looking for
somewhere
to park.
Independent
Announcement on a railway train’s public address system: ‘If there is a train driver travelling on this train who knows the way to Portsmouth please could he come to the cab.’
The Times
Great moments in civil aviation. A Nepal Airlines Boeing 757, due to fly to Hong Kong, developed what appeared to be an electrical fault. Immediately two goats were taken on to the tarmac and sacrificed to appease a Hindu god. In no time at all an airline official announced: ‘The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flight.’
Independent on Sunday
George Heron, of Middlesbrough, took some clothing to the dry cleaners and was asked for his name. âHeron,' he said. âAs in bird'.
On the ticket he was given was âMr Azinbird'.
Daily Telegraph
Lucinda Orr, of Charwelton, Northamptonshire, gets numerous variations on her name. Or, Oar, Ore, Ow, Hoare âand even the less than flattering Whore.'
Daily Telegraph
The word âverge' is French for the male organ and French visitors to Britain are delighted when they see road signs warning of Soft Verges.
Guardian
Robert Fitzgerald, of High Kelling, Norfolk, was an articled law clerk in the mid-1960s and remembers that, when his firm was acting for a property vendor called Mr Balls, a letter was written to a purchaser with the heading: âBalls to yourself'.
A reply arrived headed: âBalls to you too.'
The Times
The
Daily Telegraph
ran a series of letters from readers who suffer having their names spelt wrongly. No one is likely to beat the one from Tony Gyselynck, of Henley-on-Thames.
For 49 years he has been collecting the number of ways his name has been misspelt, including those on formal or official documentation.
Current score (in May 2007): 479.
Daily Telegraph
There is a firm of lawyers in Leeds called Godloves Solicitors.
Guardian
The Times
diary claimed a scoop when it revealed that no bluebird has ever been seen over the white cliffs of Dover. It reveals that Vera Lynn's famous World War II song was written by an American and suggests that, perhaps, âseagulls' simply did not scan.
The Times
Paul Surtees, of London SE25, tells
The Times
how a man barged in front of him to pay at a bookshop. The book the man was buying was entitled
Etiquette
.
The Times
There is a firm of solicitors in Leamington Spa called Wright Hassle.
Sue Holroyd, Guildford, Surrey.
Guardian
Seen on the side of a cesspit emptiers' truck in Northamptonshire: The Motion is Carried.
Nigel Kay, Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire.
Guardian
.
Sign on a glazing repairs van in Glasgow: âGis a break'.
Colin Rostron, Glasgow.Guardian
Bosses are giving workers fancy titles rather than a pay rise. The
Daily Mail
reported that âUptitling' has become a successful way to motivate staff when budgets are tight. It suggested some examples:
- Stock Replenishment Executives (supermarket shelf stackers)
- In-Home Infant Protection Executive (baby sitter)
- Platform/Carriage Movement Facilitator (station porter)
- Technical Sanitation Assistant (lavatory cleaner)
Daily Mail
Times
reader David Williams, of Leigh on Sea, Essex, spotted a Safeways' job vacancy ad for âAmbient Replenishment'.
âI checked with a member of the staff. In plain English it means shelf stacking.'
The Times
A friend who has an evening shelf-stacking job at a supermarket tells me that, according to her contract, she is a âTwilight Merchandiser'.
John Welford, Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
The Times
Radio 4 has a producer called Jo King and another called Will Ing.
Guardian
Children aged five are more likely to recognise Coca Cola and McDonald's logos than their own names.
Daily Telegraph
Sir Michael Caine is quoted as saying that he refuses to open any mail that is not addressed to him as âSir Michael'. âI just feel that if they don't put âSir' on the envelope, they don't know anything about me, so why should I open the letter?'
Independent
A switchboard operator had difficulty catching my name when I wanted to leave a message for a colleague. Eventually, I said âNoah, as in ark.' When my colleague called back he gleefully noted that the message read: âDr Noah Asinarc rang.'
Professor Norman Noah,
The Times
An index of the world's most expensive signatures revealed the following prices:
The Beatles
£
12,500, Adolf Hitler
£
6,000, Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe
£
4,950.
The Times
There is a baker's shop in Glastonbury called âBurns the Bread'.
Guardian
Beer Makers Coors discovered that its slogan âTurn it Loose' translates into Spanish as âSuffer from Diarrhoea'.
Reebok named a new women's tennis shoe âIncubus'. According to medieval mythology, Incubus was a demon who ravished women in their sleep.
Coca-Cola's slogan, âCoke Adds Life', was reportedly translated into Thai as âCoke brings your ancestors back from the dead'.
Ford launched its Pinto in Brazil, but had to rebrand the range after it was pointed out that pinto is slang for tiny male genitals.
Guardian
Jack was the most popular boy's name in 2006. Mohammed was next (when you count up all the ones which use different spellings) and it could soon become No.1.
Daily Telegraph
Bedfordshire police have a spokesman called Lawless, Waitrose has a top executive called Mark Price, and the chief executive of the Carbon Trust is Tom Delay.
Guardian
A BBC2 current affairs programme carried an interview with a Welshman wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan âTwll tyn i bob Sais', which loosely translates as âA***holes to the English'.
Daily Telegraph
The Ephraim Hardcastle column in the
Daily Mail
reports that Ed Balls, the secretary of state for schools, said that he had been teased at school about his surname, but added âIt was much worse for my sister Ophelia'.
Balls has no such sister â but Ophelia Balls flourishes up North. âShe' is a drag artist performing in the Newcastle area.
Daily Mail
All these names have been registered somewhere in the English speaking world in recent times:
- Allison Wunderland
- Dwain Pipe
- Ella Fant
- Pepperanne Salt
- Mary Chris-Smith
- Pepsi Kohler
- Polly Filler
- Russell Sprout
- Clay Potts
From
Buttering Parsnips, Twocking Chavs: The Secret
Life of the English Language,
by Martin H. Manser
(Orion £9.99).
Some examples from a 2007 book called
Bertha Venation and Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People
, by Larry Ashmead:
- Hedda Lettuce
- Stan Dupp
- Shanda Lear
- Harley Quinn
And Dwayne Dwopp must be rather tired of hearing âDwayne Dwopps keep falling on my head' every time he enters a room.
Daily Telegraph
Sir â Concerning funny names, David Housdon, of Elton, Cambridgeshire, recalls that when he was a lad the Rural Dean of Bedford was Canon Balls.
Daily Telegraph
The Wallasey News reports: âA man from Love Lane pleaded guilty to a six month campaign of hate against his next-door neighbours'.
Wallasey News
A book called
Rude UK
by Rob Bailey and Ed Hurst lists ânaughty' place names and includes:
- Titup Hall Drive in Headington, Oxfordshire
- Slutshole Lane, Besthorpe, Norfolk
- Hardon Road, Wolverhampton
- Busty View, Chester-le-Street
- Slack Bottom, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire
- Bonks Hill, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire
- Golden Balls Roundabout, Oxfordshire
- Husseys Lane, Hampshire
The
Sun
says these names âare sure to raise a smile â
unless you happen to live there'.
2007 World's Worst Book Title: a children's book called
Cooking with Pooh.
Guardian
Roger Pratt, of London EC1, says his understanding of the difference between a mechanic and an engineer is that when confronted by the same malfunction in a machineâ¦
A mechanic would simply hit the machine with a hammer.
The engineer would think deeply on the problem, bring his expertise and experience to bear, assess the possible corrective procedures available â and then hit it with a hammer.
The Times
The BBC apologised after a radio show mentioned a plant called Black Man's Willy.
But the bloom is not alone in having a naughty name. The
Sun
exposed its readers to Knobweed, Stiffcock, Shagbark, Virgin Thistle, Nipplewort, Cockhold, Shaggy Soldier and Sticky Willy.
Sun
under the headline: H
ARDEN
O
FF
Y
OUR
K
NOBWEED
In its search for the Oddest Book Title of the Year the
Bookseller
magazine came across
Tiles of the Unexpected:
A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns on the London Underground.
Sun
Duncan Campbell’s diary in the
Guardian
commented on all the chortling about the drinking habits of Boris Yeltsin, who died in April 2007. But, he asks, how much do our own politicians put away?
It is revealed that the House of Commons refreshment department disposed of 40,000 litres of beer, 57,300 litres of wine, and 5,700 litres of aperitifs.
‘That was the consumption over 11 months,’ reports Campbell. ‘Pretty impressive.’
Guardian
The
Sun
pointed out that boozy Boris was merely following an age-old tradition among world leaders and gave these examples:
- William Pitt the Younger, twice British PM, was born in 1759 with gout. When he was 14 his doctor described a bottle a day of port as a cure. He took his ‘medicine’ throughout his life, upping the dose to three bottles a day.
- Lord George Brown, Harold Wilson’s Foreign Secretary, was the man for whom the phrase ‘tired and emotional’ was coined.
The Times
once said: ‘George Brown drunk is a better man than the Prime Minister sober.
Sun
Aileen Ashby, of London, writes: “So the government is to focus on plans to curb middleclass drinking. May I suggest alcohol-free bars at the Palace of Westminster?”
The Times
There are some 460 words for ‘drunk’ in Bob Holder’s dictionary
How Not To Say What You Mean
. They include: blotto, boiled, half-stewed, legless, loaded, plastered, wired, zonked, Brahms, half-foxed, chemically inconvenienced and p****d.
Sun
George Melly, described in The Times as a louche, lecherous and lovable jazzman and the British equivalent of a Turkish belly dancer, died in July 2007 aged 80. He wore florid zoot suits and fedora hats and was once an 80-a-day smoker. He also claimed to have drunk a bottle of brandy every night, on top of wine and gin during the day. In later life he claimed to have cut down to ‘almost teetotalism’ – consuming in a day only a dry sherry, several gins, a couple of brandies and an unspecified amount of wine – a degree of moderation that would fell an ox.
Melly’s wit was legendary. He once asked Mick Jagger why his face was so wrinkled. Jagger said the wrinkles were laughter lines.
Melly quipped: ‘Nothing’s that funny.’
The Times / Guardian
Hertfordshire student Jack Kirby drank the contents of 4,000 Budweiser cans and built a life-sized model of a 1965 Ford Mustang with the empties.
Independent on Sunday
Scotland tops the world UFO league with 300 sightings a year – but drink is not to blame, say experts.
Independent on Sunday
When it’s closing time on Friday nights in the pubs of Kensington, the landlord shouts: ‘Come on, haven’t you got second homes to go to?’
John O’Farrell,
Guardian
Scientists have discovered that people look more attractive after a couple of drinks. Experiments show that what is known in the trade as the ‘beer goggle effect’ actually does exist.
Sunday Times
When the ban on smoking in public places began in 2007 a pub in Pickering in North Yorkshire put up this notice:
A WARM WELCOME TO ALL WARNING: STAFF MAY BECOME STROPPY OR VIOLENT DUE TO LACK OF PASSIVE SMOKING.
Daily Mail
Always carry a large flagon of whisky in case of snakebite, and furthermore always carry a small snake.
W. C. Fields quoted in
The Little Book of
Whisky Tips
Bawdy limericks were common forms of entertainment in the English taverns of the 15th and 16th centuries. Paul Vallely enjoyed a two-page romp on them in the Independent, and among the gems he came up with was ‘a rather rude one’:
There was a young woman from Leeds
Who swallowed a packet of seeds
Within half an hour
Her tits were in flower
And her fanny was covered in weeds
Another one came from former Prime Minister Clement Attlee who wrote about himself:
Few thought he was even a starter
There were many in life who were smarter
But he finished PM
A CH and OM
An earl and Knight of the Garter
Independent
An Australian barmaid was fined for crushing beer cans between her breasts – in breach of hotel licensing laws.
Sunday Times
Peter Dolan left his carthorse Peggy outside the Alexandra hotel in Jarrow, South Tyneside. But the rope was too long and Peggy followed him into the bar and was given a pint of John Smiths. She is now a regular – and is also partial to pickled onion crisps.
The Times
The Queen Mother’s longevity has been put down to ‘industrial quantities of gin, champagne and claret. They appear to have been her recipe for long life’, says a Guardian review of
Behind Closed
Doors
by former equerry Colin Burgess (published by John Blake).
At dinner parties, ‘if she felt the ice needed to be broken, she would lob a cork or a roll at someone and shout ‘Catch that’. In the last ten years of her life (she died aged 101) ‘you got the impression that she felt, ‘Wow, I’m still here, let’s enjoy it’.
Guardian
Oddd pub sign in Carlton village, East Yorkshire, spotted by Mrs S. Walmsley, of Rochdale, Lancashire:
THE ODDDFELLOWS ARMS
Had the signwriter had one too many? asks Mrs Walmsley.
Daily Mail
I was recently stopped while driving at 39mph in a 40mph zone. ‘Nobody does that at 2.00am unless he has been drinking’, said the policeman. After a negative breath test I was asked why I had been travelling below the speed limit. ‘Because,’ I said, ‘there was a police car behind me’.
Alan Calvered, Bishop’s Stortford.
Independent
When builder Neil Irwin goes out drinking he wears a T-shirt bearing his address and a photograph of his house so folk can see him home in Herne Bay, Kent.
Sun
Soon after it became illegal to smoke in public places pub customers grew nostalgic for the old familiar smells. A Lancashire firm specialising in ‘niche fragrances’ started getting orders for an ‘ashtray aerosol scent’ which recreates the authentic fug of a pub.
Independent on Sunday
The Old Spot Inn in Dursley, Gloucestershire, won the 2008 Pub of the Year Award from the Campaign for Real Ale. There is no juke box, no pool table, no fruit machine – and it doesn’t serve chips. Licensee Steve Herbert says: ‘Our drinkers come first’.
The Times
This is stuff we all need to know. Michael Winner, lover of expensive wines, says: ‘If you buy a Chateau Latour 1961 in a restaurant, probably for
£
8,000 a bottle, it is opened and poured immediately. So, allowing for three hours breathing, your Latour would be just about ready to drink as you get up to leave. I get round this problem when I take my own wines by pouring them out at home into a decanter and let them breathe away to their hearts’ content in my living room. Sometimes I pour my wine from the decanter into a milk bottle and take this to the restaurant. Amazingly, the lady accompanying me refuses to carry the milk bottles. She thinks it looks terrible. But what do I care if I’m saving a couple of thousand pounds on restaurant prices?’
Daily Mail
A new pub called The John Masefield in New Ferry, the Wirral, has been urged to change its sign because its image of the former Poet Laureate looks more like Hitler. Locals began calling the inn The Adolf and the
Sun
’s headline was A
LE
H
ITLER
. It also suggested O
NE
F
UHRER THE
R
OAD
and H
ERR OF THE
D
OG
.
Sun
The campaign to crack down on binge drinking ran into difficulties when it was reported that
anti-binge
drinking adverts were not working. Ads warning of the dangers of booze often show people passing out or being carried home. But researchers found that these scenes could remind youngsters of fun nights out and a Bath University professor said that young people bonded over tales of
alcohol-fuelled
disasters.
Sun
New sex discrimination laws mean that landlords could be punished for allowing sexist jokes in their pubs. Defiantly the
Daily Mail
filled a page with jokes that would fall foul of the new legislation:
- A horse walks into a bar and asks the barmaid for a drink. ‘Why the long face?’ asks the barmaid.
- A penguin walks into a bar and asks the barmaid: ‘Have you seen my brother?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘What does he look like?’
- A giraffe walks into a bar and orders a pint and is charged £10. The barmaid says: ‘We don’t get many giraffes in here.’ ‘At your prices I’m not surprised,’ says the giraffe.
Daily Mail