The good old days post brought to mind those practical jokes that you could buy from the classified adverts at the back of the comics. X Ray Specs, black face soap etc.
This brought to mind (nostalgia being what it is) the article from the NME of the Viv Stanshall guide to Practical Jokes. See enclosed.
Did you buy any more importantly did they work?
I once rung a friend up when I knew he was away and taped his answer machine message. I then rang back and played his message back onto his answer machine. I always imagined he’d got home, played his messages back and started hitting the machine thinking something was wrong with it. I never found out if he did.
Practical jokes
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Hot Sweets. Look like fruit jellies, but laced with a zillion Scoville units of chilli hell.
Gave one to my dad, who had a very sweet tooth, once. Trouble was, at the time he was in the middle of bleeding the brakes on his car, and became quickly convinced that he’d inadvertently ingested brake fluid, causing him to run into the kitchen and suck down gallons of cold water from the tap over the sink, spitting it out again as he went, while I corpsed myself in the hall. He was not amused once he twigged.
During my brief one year sentence at public school aged 14, I once crept into the bed of another boy and hid under his newly fashionable duvet. Shush. This was on account of his being an utter slimey sneaky smiling rotter, and so, when he left the dorm to walk the long bog trek, I, cubicled opposite in the fortunate moonlight, espied my chance, and and awaited his return, and rose up ‘wahaha HAHA!’ like a shooting range target at Aldershot. I was of course, accused of bullying by this hysterical fellow, but to this day consider it one of my finest hours.
Sleepy finger in a glass of water pff!
I was a teenage bank clerk in the early 80s. Two female colleagues were pals – and really looking forward to their holiday together in Cyprus. Money had been saved over several months and they both talked and talked non-stop about their forthcoming trip. Cyprus this, Cyprus that – did I mention I was going to Cyprus?
So – I had an idea. A friend of mine with a deeper, more adult sounding voice than me called them at work the day before their flight – armed with details that I knew from the long and winding commentary provided by both girls. He pretended to be from the travel agent and started with “you will be aware of the recent political unrest in Cyprus following the elections…” and proceeded to make up the most inspired bollocks, weaving a complicated story that meant their holiday was cancelled with no chance of a refund.
There was one phone in the main office area – and I watched Becky take the call. Her smile froze and then her face reddened and eyes became watery. At one point she said quietly “Skegness?” because this was my friend’s smarmy, upbeat offer of a replacement holiday. Now Becky was very sharp – no pushover and very funny with it. I was amazed that she even began to believe the story, let alone take it all in – hook, line and sinker – swallowed whole.
She sadly put the phone down and went to find her travel buddy. From some distance away, I could see her relaying the news and the other girl’s face going red and looking devastated. I couldn’t stand it any longer – I ran over, telling them “it’s all bollocks…” and confessed. The whole thing took no more than 5 minutes so I think it was forgotten. In time.
One played on me…… late 80’s, I was work relocated about 100 miles from my then GF, a lotta up front work to be done, not a lot of time off, new flat to sort out… all that stuff. Three months in I invited S down for her debut weekend away in my newly decorated and furnished place.
My new assistant manager (we hit it off as people pretty much from day#1) nicked my flat keys from my desk drawer and went to my place on the day that S was arriving for the first time, and very subtly, very cleverly placed a black bra under my bed, with *just* enough strap showing to be noticed.
Oh boy.
Setting off on first holiday with then-GF-now-wife, she found a pair of lacey knickers in my glove box. I still don’t know for sure who was responsible – apart from definitely not the owner of the undercrackers.
Joke? Could equally have been the most malevolent act ever.
Blimey, it’s funny what these posts bring back. Not exactly hilarious, but I’ve remembered a joke sugar spoon from my childhood (the 50s), in fact we had two from somewhere. One had a hinge so when you picked it up it dropped sugar everywhere, and the other had a hole in the spoon so that it didn’t pick anything up. Oh the fun we had.
If you just happen to have some Gallium lying around at home, the best spoon based prank is to mould Gallium into a spoon – its melts at something like 80 degC and so when someone uses to stir their tea, hilarity ensues……..
The joke golf ball that explodes talcum powder when struck from the tee. Hilarious.
Sunday afternoons years ago were for playing snooker and drinking guinness. We were all decent players but after half a dozen pints, the standard dropped. One time, one of the blokes substituted the cue ball for one with a very slight bias in it, which meant it wouldn’t run straight. It took us ages to work out what was wrong. Much cleaning of glasses, tip sanding, cries of ‘this table needs recovering’ and ‘it ran off’. Folks ordering tomato juice etc.
A very realistic looking bluebottle – when the victim wasn’t looking, place on salad etc. My childhood is starting to sound like Just William…
It’s something that was common place back in the 80’s where I worked. One or two were even quite funny
– a rather bumptious twit we worked with had two phones on her desk. Never knew why. We’d wait until she was fetching a visitor from reception and then replace the handset of one with a banana, which meant if you dialed the number (no caller ID in these days) it would ring. So we did. So rewarding seeing her pick up the wrong phone handset first. We also (after a lunchtime pint or 2) discovered you could use Typex to mask the pushbutton numbers on the phones. It’s harder than you think to dial when they are gone.
– I never fell foul of this one, but anyone who left their car keys on their desk would have their car moved to the furthest part of the car park possible, and if available, items stashed for hopefully later discovery (stale sandwiches, running kit, underwear, dodgy mags). Most victims were so relieved that their car handn’t been stolen they didn’t check for planted “evidence”
– A number of colleagues banded together to get a current work mate of mine. Sitting at his desk, eating his lunch his phone range and was told by his bosses PA there had been a major disciplinary incident at a plant that was a 3 hour flight away and he had to leave right now to deal with it. Minutes later tickets arrived on his desk for the flight from a courier. His boss rang to stress he needed to go pronto and reception called to say a car for him was waiting outside. As he got in the car he was handed a file and told there was some important papers to read on the way to the airport. He opened the file to find an poster size note saying “April Fool, asshole”, and the car back outside reception where almost the whole company stood cheering.
– He got revenge -over the next 6 months those he suspected of organizing the above would land at airports to find their name on a sign and a wheelchair waiting for them
Reminds me of a phone ruse that we used a few times…this was also in the 80s – someone would dial up a sex line and then transfer the call to the unsuspecting victim. There was no way of knowing who had transferred the call back in the pre-digital dark ages!
Back in the early ’70s, a mate and I worked for a small electronics manufacturer in an assembly workshop, along with half a dozen other guys and a couple of women. Our foreman, Les, was a little fusspot guy who had his desk in the centre of the room kept obsessively neat and tidy with all his pens and pencils in order of size and his blotter, phone etc. precisely arranged on the desktop. One time he left the workshop to go to the front office and we all sprang into action.
We turned his desk around 180° so that the side with the drawers where he kept his notepad etc. was no longer facing his chair, then replaced everything on the desktop so that it all looked exactly the same as before. When he came back, he didn’t notice straight away. When he did there was a sharp intake of breath and a “tut” sound, but amazingly he said nothing.
Another of his obsessions was with the automatic door closer, which he had to have set just right so that the door closed silently apart from the click of the catch. When he left the room we used to nip over and readjust it, so that when he returned the door closed behind him with a bang. Again, he would emit the sharp intake of breath and the tut, but say nothing.
We were bastards.
I listened to the autobiography of a US comedian from the old days – more from the old-style Vegas vaudeville tradition than a biting, politically-aware satirist. His “practical jokes”, which he professed to love, seemed to be more like vandalism. Smashing up someone’s car is not a practical joke, as such.
I went in early and Velcroed as many items as possible to a colleague”s desk: stapler, hole punch etc and the phone handset to the receiver. It took her quite a while to sort out after she answered the first call of the day, only to lift the whole phone off the desk. Best of all, she blamed a bewildered director until about lunchtime when the penny dropped that it was me.
Further desk humour: ages ago in a paper based office we used inked pads, to stamp notifcations on bits of paper now long forgotten and archived away.
I would rub the earpiece of my colleagues phone receiver on the ink pad (while she was out). Then ring her on her return.
This same lady (still a close personal friend) would often bring in a long old-fashioned umbrella on rainy days. Again, while she was out, I would sometimes open it (indoors! I know!) and feed in strips of office shredding into the folds. Then wrap it back up tightly and replace it.
If it was raining on her way home she would open it to a brief but incredibly embarrasing flurry of the stuff. I once got an elastic band flicked at my ear from behind at close range for this. I felt it churlish to complain too much.
20+ years ago, when the office
twatjoker was getting married, he invited us all to his stag-do and wedding reception (I don’t think he had many real friends).We went paintballing and covered him from head to foot in large purple bruises. He was honeymooning on a Caribbean beach and looked a frightful sight.
At the reception, we added to the contents of his suitcase, an alarm clock and a block of marzipan with two pipe-cleaners between them. It looked just like a plastic bomb and timer. The happy couple apparently missed their flight, him having been detained at the x-ray scanner and had the rubber-glove treatment in a side room.
He was less of a jolly-japer when he returned to work.
Post-911, it seems rather less comical.
When I went to technical college, we often went out at lunchtime to find something better than canteen fare. On one occasion, three of us were driving around aimlessly when the front passenger pulled out two pieces of narrow gauge black plastic pipe that had been glued together. The driver explained that they looked like the barrels of a shotgun and it had been done “for a laugh.” The passenger usually rode a motorcycle and promptly pulled out his balaclava and a jolly few minutes was had pointing the “gun” out of the window to the alarm of passing pedestrians who saw a masked thug with a shotgun in the front of a Vauxhall Viva.
That sort of thing would get you arrested or shot these days.
Yeah, if you’re black. To be fair, in that case in those days you wouldn’t have even needed the plastic pipe.
Another day, we were driving over Harrow Hill, past the public school. One of the boys dropped his straw boater in the road and the same driver swerved to run over it.
Putting on of those curly plastic dog poos on the landing every morning for a week, until ennui builds. Then, on day 8, drop a real one there and watch the derision until it gets picked up.
I worked at a Electronic repair and calibration factory in the late 80s and some of the kit sent in litteraly begged for high jinks/death.
The piece most engineers were loath to service was the Clare flash tester and it probe…30 kilovolts of fun and games.
One engineer had a reputation as a jinkster and caught many of us out so one day as he repaired one of these beasts I had my revenge.
As he delved deep inside the case I crept under his bench with a (bought in for just such a opportunity) camera flash gun.
At JUST the right moment I triggered the flash between his leg, resulting in him pushing back his wheeled chair at great speed into the storage racking behind.
As two rather fancy (and very expensive) Techtronics scopes tottered and fell to the floor I beat a hasty retreat…..
To say our senior engineer, workshop manager AND company boss were pissed is putting it lightly.
I got off with a written warning and as senior storeman was given the unenviable task of explaining to the customers why their scopes would be slightly late.
The cruelest prank I ever saw was someone who made a colleague a cup of tea but put double sided tape around the rim of the mug. The victim had the rim of a red hot mug stuck to his lip and had to pull the skin off his lip to remove it. A couple of weeks later he got his revenge by making the perpetrator a cup of tea with Vim in it.
I love this ad – from a few years ago. It sounds like a few workplaces are like this.
https://youtu.be/W17jEqdtDoo