49 HUMOUR/JOKES/THE WORLDS FUNNIEST JOKE

It is possible to define the funniest joke in the World, despite all the cultural diversity, the many different types of humour and the myriad language barriers. Gupta Sing-Bali, wrote the World’s funniest joke in Brest, France in 1841. Being the only Indian in this Brittany naval port, Gupta had to develop an acute sense of humour in order to survive. He originally tried opening a Take–Away Restaurant, but misjudged the French passion for haute cuisine, and was almost beaten to death for serving Oysters Vindaloo with a dessert wine. As he lay recovering from his wounds he had an epiphany and realised the divine comedy. Fortunately, Gupta understood the power of slapstick and didn’t go the route of Dante. He replaced Paradise with Parody, Inferno with Innuendo and Purgatory with Absurdity, making for a much funnier read. Unfortunately, his efforts were so good, Mr Sing-Bali, all the patients and the entire nursing staff of the Brest Hospital died laughing when he told the one about the duck who eats monkeys. Divine comedy indeed.

48 HUMANITY/GENERAL STUPIDITY/RACIAL HATRED

Up until March 29th 1983, all colours, creeds, religions and castes had indeed lived together in perfect harmony, tolerating and appreciating each other’s beliefs and diversities with interest and fervour. However, such was the utter contempt and horror at Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s appallingly sycophantic collaboration ‘Ebony and Ivory’ that within twelve minutes of its first airing on national television, the worlds first known race riots broke out simultaneously in Los Angeles, Oldham, Somalia, Brixton, South Africa, Texas and most of Eastern Europe. The songs co-producer Andy McFluffer, life-long member of far right-wing underground political party, The Barnsley Supremacists, has since been awarded multiple accolades by Campaign magazine for one of the greatest marketing coups of all time.
Such was the escalated sensitivity surrounding music and its new-found possible link to racial bloodshed that just two weeks later, during a live performance on middle eastern TV favourite, Shalom of the Pops, the thus-far tranquil continent was instantly thrown into infinite military instability the moment Kazakhstan’s most celebrated comedian cum songwriter uttered the words to the chorus of his highly awaited new release.
Most historians believe it a little harsh to lay the blame for an entire territory’s political problems on a simple singing light entertainer. Others, however, admit that the moment they heard Mohammad ‘Chubby’ Ali gaily holler the words ‘Allah, Allah, who the f*ck is Allah’ they feared the worst.

47 LANGUAGE/GRAMMAR/COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Some collective nouns are mundane, for example ‘a bunch of bananas’. Some however are inspired, like ‘a murder of crows’ or ‘an ambush of widows’. Most have been lost to time and some have been banned. ‘A feltch of homosexuals’ dropped out of common parlance in 1984, due largely to the rise of the Aids epidemic and a distancing from unsavoury practices. ‘A munch of Lezzers’ however is still widely used in North Wales and parts of Shropshire. ‘A twitch of Spastics’, ‘a hastiness of Flyds’ and ‘an arsecunt of Tourette Sydrome sufferers’ never caught on due to people’s general reluctance to embrace the issues involved. ‘A tackle of Trannies’ is commonly applied but only in specialist circles.
Both midgets and dwarves demand the exclusive right to ‘Pantheon’, a feud that has lasted centuries. The Midgets think the Dwarves should have ‘shrubbery’ and the Dwarves think it should be ‘a clump of Midgets’. Understandably, their choice of collective nouns for each other has only escalated the tension. It culminated in the Dwigit wars of 1905 where millions of little people were killed by circus cannons, collapsing clown cars and when the confetti from the ‘bucket of water’ gag was replaced with anthrax. Pedantic nomenclature caused such futility.
Surprisingly, the collective noun for collective nouns is ‘a Mavis’. No one knows why.

46 FIGHTERS OF THE UNIVERSE/THE BEST FIGHTERS/THE BRITISH

The British are the best fighting race in the Universe. This doesn’t mean they are dangerous. Lovely sense of humour and brilliant raconteurs; when they conquered the world they painted all maps pink, to tell the losing nations that they fought like girls. They view fighting not as conflict but more of an entertainment, like a dance. Every dancer needs a partner and as war is traditionally a very male domain, the Scottish wear skirts and makeup to address the shortage of ladies in a fight. The Welsh will often put vegetables on their heads to give the others a laugh when the going gets tough.
The British take fighting very seriously. They had the choice of any land in which to settle, and chose a cramped, damp island with long dark winters and miserable wet summers to keep them hard. When it became apparent that terrorism was a tricky form of fighting the Irish split themselves in two in order to practice. Even when relaxing the British are training for a scrap. The British Pub is in fact a Battle Gym. The English have made themselves immune to chemical warfare by drinking real ale, eating pickled eggs and breathing toxic fumes. Darts, better than a knife, got range and if dipped into a pint of Old Bishop’s Nostril becomes an instant poison arrow. Pool, good for ballistics and pressure points. Pub ashtrays are impossibly heavy and made of glass for a reason, training.
Americans can’t figure out why the British civilians are unarmed. Simple, guns are not necessary when you are that tasty. If you want to win a war get the British on your side. The Americans at least understand that much.

45 INVENTIONS/BAD INVENTIONS/POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Political Correctness (PC) is a form of intellectual bullying. Some people simply are not blessed with the ability to think up imaginative, nice sounding phrases like ‘Motorially Challenged People’ and find the expression ‘Spastic’ easier to remember. Others have trouble pronouncing the words and find ‘Spasmo’ less effort to blurt out, especially motorially challenged people.
Some PC words are too cold and clinical. Lezzer is an expression that is warm and embracing; it suggests action, some one who is lezzing. Lesbian sounds passive and lugubrious in comparison. The same axiom applies to knob jockey and homosexual.
The PC way to deal with someone who doesn’t agree with you, is either to get lawyers involved, or invade them. Both solutions are very expensive. Soon all Saturday night pub brawls will be resolved with legal teams and BLU82 Daisy Cutter bombs. The phrase ‘Leave it John, he ain’t worth it’ will soon be replaced with ‘My council has issued you a ten point ultimatum. Non compliance will result in an all out nuclear strike.’ Queue jumpers beware.

44 INVENTIONS/MARVELLOUS INVENTIONS/RONDABOUTS

The Roundabout is the Richard Feynman of road junctions, a brilliant problem solver and sexually liberal. They simultaneously reduce collisions, injuries and fatalities whilst providing an area for copulation by exhibitionists.
Many geometries were initially tried; the triangle-about wasn’t as good and the square-about was too German. None were so successful as the round.
Percy Perkins, a philosopher and town planner in Leicester, toyed with the ideas of the point-about and the line-about. His colleagues would argue that these were just the same things as roads, but Percy would draw upon the subtleties of Euclid’s Elements to demonstrate their validity. In a moment of exasperation they finally agreed to his Pentagram-about, if he promised to give the Euclidian metaphysics a rest. But little did they know that Percy was a particularly nasty Satanist bent on summoning the anti-Christ on the A607 to Melton Mowbray. The confusion, angst and rage caused by the ten-sided junction, created enormous amounts of negative energy. The Earth began to crack and Hell spawn prepared to enter our realm. Fortunately, the Nation noticed that the Mowbray pork pies were running low, due to delivery lorries getting lost in the pentagram. The county council of Leicester, in an unprecedented act of efficiency, quickly replaced the Pentagram with a Round. The Earth closed crushing the demons and normal pork pie percolation resumed.
Never underestimate the power of the pie.

43 SCIENCE/UNITS OF MEASUREMENT/INCHES

The inch is a thinly used imperial unit of measurement, used to scale only three things known to man; vinyl based music recordings, rainfall and penises. It was widely thought by the world’s foremost science scholars and metaphysicists that the inch would disappear completely once the sun slowly supernovas and scorches the earth to a crisp, digital downloading takes over the music industry and someone invents the metric cock. However, a ancient secret pact was made by Peter Pleater, a 14th century window-blind salesmen from Olde York town to the sacred master of the Inch that he would create a sect which would never allow the use of the Inch to deprecate. This sect, he promised, would pass down through his family forever, thus creating an infinite future for the measurement unit. In return for this commitment, he would be given the secret of how to create the pull mechanism on a Venetian blind. In a moment of genius, Pleater came up with a way of securing this pact without the risk of passing the secret verbally down through his family, and by simply training his children into two separate employment paths. At the last census, every one of Pleaters 18793 descendants now work as stubborn market stall holders or interracial porn website designers. The Inch will be safe forever.