RIDDLES, PUZZLES AND JOKES

One liners by famous comedians

found by a reader in The Daily Telegraph:

People tell me I take mini-golf too seriously, but my caddy disagrees.

Interesting fact: T-shirt is short for Tyrannosaurus Shirt - because of the short arms.

I've been learning German for twenty years: it's zwanzig Jahren.

People ask what personal grooming products I use. I just get whatever is available in the supermarket, so this week it’s cat food and grapes.

I saw the list of the top 100 things to do before you die for dolphins and "swim with humans" was not on it.

Some jokes

found by Helen and kindly sent in by Rev. Georgina.

Three boys are in the schoolyard bragging about their fathers. The first boy says, 'My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, they give him $50.' The second boy says, 'That's nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, they give him $100.' The third boy says, 'I got you both beat. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon, and it takes eight people to collect all the money!'

A police recruit was asked during an exam, 'What would you do if you had to arrest your own mother?' He answered, 'Call for backup.'

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to 'Honour thy father and thy mother,' she asked, 'Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?' One little boy answered immediately: 'Thou shall not kill.'

Cartoons by Gill (based on Patrick's puns)

1. Seen in Snowdon Park perhaps?

The best of Myles

I do hope Patrick won't be offended if I suggest that there is something distinctly Irish in his delightful punning and word-play. I'm think particularly of work of the great Irish humourist Brian O'Nolan (aka Flann O'Brien). It was under another pseudonym, Myles Na gCopaleen, that he wrote a series of unlikely tales of Keats and Chapman, which all lead up to puns of a Patrick-like pungency. If you love a pun, and the verbal inventiveness and sophistication of Irish humour, here are a couple of examples:

Keats, when living in the country, purchased an expensive chestnut gelding. This animal was very high-spirited and largely untrained and gave the novice owner a lot of trouble. First it was one thing, then another, but finally he was discovered one morning to have disappeared from his stable. Foul play was not suspected nor did the poet at this stage adopt the foolish expedient of locking the stable door. On the contrary he behaved very sensibly. He examined the stable to ascertain how the escape had been effected and then travelled all over the yard on his hands and knees looking for traces of the animal's hooves. He was like a dog looking for a trail, except that he found a trail where many a good dog would have found nothing. Immediately the poet was off cross-country following the trail. It happened that Chapman was on a solitary walking tour in the vicinity and he was agreeably surprised to encounter the poet in a remote mountainy place. Keats was walking quickly with his eyes on the ground and looked very preoccupied. He had evidently no intention of stopping to converse with Chapman. The latter, not understanding his friend's odd behaviour, halted and cried: 'What are you doing, old man?'

'Dogging a fled horse,' Keats said as he passed by.

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Keats was once presented with an Irish terrier, which he humorously named Byrne. One day the beast strayed from the house and failed to return at night. Everybody was distressed, save Keats himself. He reached reflectively for his violin, a fairly passable timber of the Stradivarius feciture, and was soon at work with chin and jaw.

Chapman, looking in for an after-supper pipe, was astonished at the poet's composure, and did not hesitate to say so. Keats smiled (in a way that was rather lovely).

'And why should I not fiddle,' he asked, 'while Byrne roams?'

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Once Chapman, in his tireless quest for a way to get rich quick, entered into a contract with a London firm for the supply of ten tons of swansdown. At the time he had no idea where he could get this substance, but on the advice of Keats went to live with the latter in a but on a certain river estuary where the rather odd local inhabitants cultivated tame swans for the purposes of their somewhat coarsely grained eggs. Chapman erected several notices in the locality inviting swan owners to attend at his but for the purpose of having their fowls combed and offering a 'substantial price' per ounce for the down so obtained. Soon the but was surrounded by gaggles of unsavoury-looking natives, each accompanied by four or five disreputable swans on dog-leads. The uproar was enormous and vastly annoyed Keats, who was in bed with toothache. Chapman went out and addressed the multitude and then fell to bargaining with individual owners. After an hour in the pouring rain he came in to Keats, having apparently failed to do business. He was in a vile temper.

'Those appalling louts!' he exploded. 'Why should I go out and humiliate myself before them, beg to be allowed to comb their filthy swans, get soaked to the skin bargaining with them?'

'It'll get you down sooner or later,' Keats mumbled.

More PPE Jokes

Following the pictures I posted by Alex Wilson (now available to buy as postcards from The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. I've been sent a number of other mask images and jokes. This one I thought was the best, so thanks to the anonymous sender for the link.