APRIL 2007

CHILDBIRTH.
Should children witness child birth?

Paramedics got a call to assist with a woman in childbirth,
only one paramedic responded to the call.

Due to a power outage, the house was very, very dark, so the
paramedic asked Kathleen, a 3-year-old girl, to hold a flashlight high
over her Mummy so he could see while he helped deliver the baby.

Very diligently, Kathleen did as she was asked.

Heidi pushed and pushed, and after a little while Connor was
born.

The paramedic lifted him his by his little feet and spanked
him on his bottom, Connor began to cry.

The paramedic then thanked Kathleen for her help and asked
the wide-eyed 3-year old what she thought about what she had just
witnessed.

Kathleen quickly responded, "He shouldn't have crawled in
there in first place......... smack him again."

FEBRUARY 2007

A man walked into his backyard one morning and found there was a gorilla in a tree. He called a gorilla-removal service, and soon a serviceman arrived with a stick, a rottweiler, a pair of handcuffs and a shotgun.

"Now listen carefully," he told the homeowner, "I'm going to climb the tree and poke the gorilla with this stick until he falls to the ground. The trained rottweiler will then go right for his, uh, sensitive area, and when the gorilla instinctively crosses his hands in front to protect himself, you slap the handcuffs on"

"Ok, got it." the homeowner replied. "But what’s that shotgun for?"

"If I fall out of the tree before the gorilla," the man said, "shoot the rottweiler."

NOVEMBER 2006

Deadly Dozen

A dozen deadly textable gags for you.

1. Two elephants walk off a cliff... boom, boom!

2. I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him 50 quid that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. He said, No, the steaks are too high."

3. A man came round in hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, "Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I know, I've cut your arms off"

4. A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only Clingfilm for shorts. The shrink says, "Well, I can clearly see your nuts."

5. My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli. A strong currant pulled him in.

6. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly. They lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it.

7. Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with hundreds and thousands. Police say he topped himself.

8. Guy goes into the doctor's: "Doc, I've got a cricket ball stuck up my backside." "How's that?" "Don't you start."

9. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

10. I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me "Can you give me a lift?" I said "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it."

11. A man walked into the doctors, he said, "I've hurt my arm in several places" The doctor said, "Well don't go there anymore."

12. 1 in 5 people in the world r Chinese. Theres 5 in my family so it must b 1 of them. My Mum, my Dad, my older brother Colin, or my younger brother Ho-Chin-Wang

Smart Stereo

A lady bought a brand-new, top-of-the-range BMW, but three days after she took delivery, she returned it to the dealer, complaining that she could not get the stereo to work.

"This is what we call a 'Smart Stereo', madam", explained the salesman. "You just tell it what you want to listen to, and it will play it for you. If you want to listen to Beethoven, just say 'Beethoven'. If you want the news, just say 'News'"

After trying it a few times the lady drove away delighted.

Some days later she was sitting in her car at a set of traffic lights. The lights changed to green and she started to pull away. Just then, a white van driven by a very fat man came screaming through the red light in his lane and straight in front of her. Breaking hard, she narrowly avoided hitting him.

"Fat moron!!" she yelled at the speeding van, whereupon a voice from the stereo announced; "There now follows a government statement from the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr John Prescott". "

OCTOBER 2006

GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:

1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2) When your Mum is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.

GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:

1) Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree.
2) Wrinkles don't hurt.
3) Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts.
4) Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
5) Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fibre, not the toy.

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD

1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:

1) You believe in Santa Claus.
2) You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3) You are Santa Claus.
4) You look like Santa Claus.

SUCCESS:

At age 4 success is . . ... not piddling in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 17 success is . . ..having a drivers licence.
At age 35 success is . . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers licence.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not piddling in your pants.

"It was announced in England that Tony Blair will leave as British Prime Minister in May. So, President Bush has toppled yet another government." --Jay Leno

"It's been reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is going to be stepping down next summer. After hearing about it, President Bush said, 'Damn, he's the only foreign guy who speaks American.'." --Conan O'Brien

Blair & Bush sing 'Endless Love'

MAY 2006

So we have a new England football team manager.

Now he has to select the rest of his team. perhaps he could recruit
Jon Twojags to look after the secretaries that work at the FA.



He could also hire Pat Blewitt to advise on nutrition and when there has been a bad result she could be wheeled out to say
" England are having their best year ever."

FEBRUARY 2006

The Guardian on East Anglian humour.

"I rather liked the joke about the two men in the balloon coming down and shouting to an old Suffolk chap, "Where are we?" To which the old chap replies, "You're in a balloon."

I passed through the Saturday market, not noticeably more restrained and contemplative than the northern one, pausing to discover that the man on the flower stall with a voice, as he said, like Joe Pasquale's, had been a clown in Great Yarmouth. I was on my way to The Nutshell, the smallest pub in Britain, measuring seven and a half feet by 15 feet, a pretty good joke in itself. A sign on the wall read Coach Parties Welcome. The barman, whose name was Jack, told me that the record number to fit in the pub was 102. "And a Jack Russell," said Tony, who was stood at the bar. I asked him why comics didn't seem to come from East Anglia. "Poor road access," he said.

A mummified cat was hanging above the bar. I wondered what its name was. "Lucky," said Terry, who was sitting on a bench. Jack said he'd come to Bury from Portsmouth. I asked him what the main difference was. "Not as many sailors," said Tony.

Great stuff, except that Terry came from Altrincham, and Tony was from Burnham Beeches. "Look," said Tony, pointing through the window to a man sat on a bench across the street, "that's Paul - he's from Bury. Great bloke, Paul. Bury born and bred. You should talk to him. Absolutely no sense of humour."

Nevertheless, the next evening, Bury Corn Exchange, a noble building, was packed for the monthly Fat Cat Comedy Club, "East Anglia's biggest". Mark and Martin, two of the four organisers, who are so enthusiastic about comedy that they do it for love not profit, said that they struggled a bit to come up with any local talent. In fact, for Red Nose Day, they had joined up with the local BBC radio station in a competition to find new young Suffolk comics and eventually had to settle for a semi-pro who was a regular at the holiday camps.

No, they didn't know why this should be, either. Steffan, back in Bury from his new home in Florida and sitting with a big group of friends, was clearer: Bury was too rural and reserved. Cobbett liked it, I said. "Nice!" said Steffan. "Nice - that's all it is. You can go away for two years and come back and there's a new mini-roundabout and that's about it."

Still, the show went down a storm. Again, as with the northern Bury, it didn't seem to matter what style of comedy was on offer: Mancunian from Des Sharples, student-surreal from Andy Zaltzman, Canadian dry from Angelo Tsarouchas: they laughed at it all. A puzzle, then, which I wondered if Sid Kipper might solve.

Sid Kipper? Linda Smith told me about him. East Anglia's finest. I caught up with him in Trunch Village Hall, not far from Cromer, not far from the sea; near enough, indeed, as Sid said, up on the stage, with guitar and in a suit of an interestingly electric shade, to make people object to having anything to do with the Revenue. Sid took the hall on a musical tour of the Norfolk coast, visiting, among other places, Great Yarmouth, "so called because it gets on your nerves", but not going across the county border, because that's where you would get suffolkated.

Sid sang songs featuring a mermaid called Belinda, 16 sailors and a piece of rope, and pointed out that, round here, there was no difference in pronunciation between heron and herring, which made life a little confusing. Sid had the droll, slow delivery of a kind no longer fashionable, and, as Linda had predicted, was very funny. Sid performs all over the country, mostly in the country. I spoke to him during the interval; he said he was trying to interest Radio 4 in a series in which he would act as a guide to all these urban incomers. I did wonder whether he was driven enough to put East Anglia on the comedy map, though. "I don't want a lot of money," he said. "So I'm doing quite well because I'm achieving my ambition." He then quoted Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock and further complicated matters by handing me a card showing that his alter ego, Chris Sugden, lives in Bradford, where he'd moved for love.

I went to Thetford to ponder. Thetford is the birthplace of Tom Paine, legendary revolutionary, and also comic philosopher: "The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately." An uncannily accurate description of the town's most famous temporary residents, the cast of Dad's Army, who used to film nearby and stayed at The Bell, where the great Arthur Lowe once fell asleep in his starter, woke up, lifted his head, paused for a beat, and said, "Soup in this place has gone off."

The Bell is said to be serially haunted; I stayed there, too, hoping for some help from friendly Walmington-on-Sea spirits, but not much came, although I did discover that John Le Mesurier was born in Bury. East Anglia remained an enigma. Despite intense researches, I was no nearer to the secret of why funny people came from some places and didn't come from some others. I had even done a comparative traffic warden test, only to find that wardens in both Buries - thank you, Steve and Derek - found most people pleasant and had never been subjected to physical assault. April fools? The northern Bury paper had gone for a public garden dedicated to Camilla Parker Bowles, while the eastern Bury one had plumped for a giant Ferris wheel overshadowing the cathedral's new tower.

Capitulation to the Smith-Fellows line seemed inevitable. A last hope: Stephen Fry, born in Hampstead, brought up in Norfolk, reputedly with a brain as big as both. And what a potential double act I had to suggest: Fry and Kipper! Sadly, Fry's agent said he was out of the country and incommunicado, filming in Germany. Germans: there's a theory about them, too, isn't there? My next project beckons. Meanwhile, someone has just mentioned that Mr Pastry was from Norwich.

FEBRUARY 2006
The following excerpts are actual answers given on history tests and in
Sunday school quizzes by children between 5th and 6th grade, in Ohio, USA They were collected over a period of three years by two teachers:
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Ancient Egypt was old. It was inhabited by gypsies and mummies who all
wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the
Sarah is such that all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
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Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made unleavened
bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandos. He died before he ever reached North America but his commandos made it.
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Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines. He was an
actual hysterical figure as well as being in the bible. It sounds like he
was somewhat busy too.
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The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't
have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a young female moth.
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Socrates was a famous old Greek teacher who went around giving people
advice. They killed him. He later died from an overdose of wedlock which is
apparently poisonous. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic
decline.
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In the first Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and
threw the java. The games were messier then than they show on TV now.
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Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of
March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king.
Dying, he gasped out "Same to you, Brutus."
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Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonised by Bernard Shaw for
reasons I don't really understand. The English and French still have
problems.
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Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen". As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah!" and that was the end of the fighting for a long while.
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It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented
removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the
circulation of blood.
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Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes
and started smoking.
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Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper which was
very dangerous to all his men.
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The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and
is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and
hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter.
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Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote
Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise
Lost. Since then no one ever found it.
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Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the
Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two
cats backward and also declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot
stand." He was a naturalist for sure. Franklin died in 1790 and is still
dead.
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Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's Mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own
hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation
Proclamation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theatre and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
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Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practised on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.
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Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf that he wrote loud music and became the father of rock and roll. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in
1827 and later died for this.
 
JANUARY 2006