I don’t think we have done one of these for a while. A post on my “dog”:thread brought to mind a very funny line I remember from Clive James – “They say Sophia Loren’s body was designed by a committee….of perverts!”. You need to imagine the great man’s delivery there,
And then I remember something my wife said when I observed that New Zealand is small…but feels big at the same time. She replied “that’s deep…but shallow at the same time”.
So I’m in the market for witty things said by the rich and famous but also that stinging rejoinder or that chucklesome one liner you heard at work or at the chemist.
I can give you a real life one that happened to me working as a pharmacist the early 1990s.
The circus was in town for the week and a chap came up to the pharmacy looking for some advice on allergy relief. I recommended an appropriate product and asked if he knew what he was allergic to.
He said it was probably cats.
I asked him when he might come into contact with cats.
He replied that he was the lion tamer in the circus!
It is a true story because I went to the circus and there he was!
Brilliant. I hope he was in full costume and carrying a whip and a chair.
Sounds a bit like the joke about the guy who sees the doctor about a terrible rash on his arm that extends all the way up past his elbow.
After quizzing his new patient about what he does for a living, the doctor establishes the man works in a circus where his main job is inserting suppositories into elephants’ anuses.
When the doctor advises a change of job might fix the problem, the outraged man replies “Sorry, but there’s no way I’m giving up show business?”
There’s an interview on YouTube with Ken Dodd and The Beatles, where Ken says he would like to be the fifth Beatle, but he would have to change his name to something more earthy and asks the boys for any suggestions. Quick as a flash George says “What about Ken Sod”.
A friend of mine many years ago, seeing a (what we called, before Political Correctness) dwarf lighting up a cigarette “He should pack that in. It’ll stunt his growth”.
When I smoked, people used to say that to me. I’m 6 foot 5.
A comment I always recall fondly came from a good friend of mine who is only about five foot tall (I’m just over six foot). Getting a round of drinks in at the student bar I found I didn’t have enough money to pay for them. I asked him “Have you got any cash on you? I’m two short.” “You’re too short???” was his immediate reply.
I read Bob Mortimer’s autobiography recently, during which he recalls the time as a teenager his GP had him bent over to examine some problem or another and Bob accidentally let one go. Superb riposte from his GP was: “Don’t worry about it son. Better an empty house than an unruly tenant”.
A well-worn classic from George Kelly on hearing someone suggest Mick Jagger’s wrinkles were ‘laughter lines’ – ‘Nothing’s *that* funny’.🙂
George Melly?
It was indeed George Melly and in most of the retellings I’ve heard it was MJ himself who tried to pass his wrinkles off as “laughter lines”
I believe George Melly is also credited with saying that the only advantage of old age was the loss of sexual desire, which he described as “like being unchained from a lunatic.”
Also credited to Picasso, but in A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Peter Carter, the David Niven character, credits it to Sophocles via Plato
@Simpering-wreck
I believe that quote was actually George Kelly.\\|
Not to worry, the two are apparently often confused
Joan Rivers said of Mick Jagger “he’s the only man I’ve met with child bearing lips”
I’ve seen it ascribed to Marianne Faithfull on meeting a very ancient WH Auden later remarking that if that was what his face looked like, imagine the state of his scrotum
That was Hockney when drawing him. Auden himself said his face was like ‘a wedding cake left out in the rain’.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014561/
From a Frankie Howard biography – Frankie overheard arguing with a barman who seemed be in his debt – ‘But Dave, it,s not the principle, it,s the money!’
that was Tommy Cooper!
Tommy Cooper used to pay a taxi driver and then press something extra into the cabbie’s hand or top pocket while saying – “have a drink on me!”.
It was a teabag.
I’m sure this wasn’t original but my timing was spot on.
At a wedding reception a friend of mine, the sort of man who is always complaining about the modern world, was talking to the groom’s mother. They were reminiscing about an area of London they both used to live in and Tom was saying, ‘That’s right! Just across the road from the lunatic asylum! Of course you’re probably not allowed to say lunatic asylum any more. These days it’s probably ‘residential care facility for the psychiatrically different’’.
‘I know Tom. It’s madness gone politically correct.’
That is brilliant!
From my extensive repertoire of dad jokes: when passing a cemetery, “We’re at the dead centre of Stoke Newington (or wherever).”
People are just dying to go there
I saw a quip a few years ago from an Aussie along the lines of ‘every time someone emigrates from New Zealand to Australia, the average IQ in both countries goes down’.
That’s usually credited to 80s NZ PM Robert Muldoon – who said the average IQ of both nations goes UP when a Kiwi moves to Australia.
Talking of NZ PMs, when a journalist asked a departing David Lange “can I have a quick word?”, Lange replied “Velocity” and carried on walking. Gordon Strachan made the same gag about 20 years later.
I remember Strachan making the quip. At the time, the pedant in me thought, “Velocity could be quick or slow. He should have said ‘ rapid’.”
Gordon Strachan after a heavy defeat.
“Gordon, in what areas do you think your side were lacking this afternoon?”
“What areas? Mainly, that big green rectangle out there”
Two I have witnessed.
The first was the a school friend who, as we walked past a particulalry rusty and unkempt Ford Fiesta, said “Oh look – a Ford Fester.”
Secondly, when playing football, someone described one of the players as “having deceptive pace. He’s slower than he looks”.
My son, aged 8 or so, invented a car called a Ford Siesta.
Rather lax parenting, not being sure how old you son is.
(Joke. Feeble, I know.)
Just to bump this marvellous thread to 100 comments, I’ll leave you with the Tim Vine gag: ‘What do you call a lady with big teeth who sleeps in the afternoon? Siesta Rantzen’.
Thank you! The hamper arrived full of whoopee cushions, itching powder, kazoos and spinning bow ties. Such fun!
Until he graduated and could earn enough money to replace it, my future Best Man drove a rustbucket/deathtrap christened the Talbot Sambaghini.
It was light blue, apart from all of the brown bits.
Cars. Walking down Rectory Lane in Tooting about 30 years ago with my pal James, we passed a car with reg no. A123 0WW
‘That must be James Brown’s car’. I said.
(Not sure if that reg looks right now, but it was similar enough to make the gag)
Wasn’t the football one Brian Clough about John Robertson?
Once while out with my eldest daughter, we met someone on the street that I hadn’t seen in a while. As always, the question arose: ‘So, what are you listening to these days?” I replied, quite pretentiously “Well, I’m listening to quite a bit of folk and country music” I heard my daughter say quietly “Too much folkin’ country music”
I was reminded of the saying that middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist change places.
Dorothy Parker.
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States, and his highly reserved character in social settings led to the nickname “Silent Cal”. When she was told of his death she us quoted as saying:
“How can they tell?”
When Calvin Coolidge became president he attended a dinner in his honour, and two ladies in attendance had a bet with each other, with one stating she could get more than two words out of Coolidge. She approached Coolidge and said “My friend has bet me 20 dollars that I won’t be able to get more than two words out of you”. Coolidge looked at her and replied “You lose”.
I don’t recall whether it’s Coolidge but the tradition of “Hail to the Chief” being played when the President enters a room came from a First Lady insisting on it. Possibly Eleanor Roosevelt. Basically, her husband would enter the room and no one would notice.
A Dorothy Parker quote I always liked was when someone asked her about a function she’d attended. Dorothy answered, “If all the girls at that party were laid end to end I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.
Churchill: “A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk,’ to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.”
Bit harsh.
Also:
Young man [after seeing Churchill leave the bathroom without washing his hands]: At Eton, they taught us to wash our hands after using the toilet.
Churchill: At Harrow, they taught us not to piss on our hands.
At a Dinner …
Lady: Do you mind not breaking wind in front of me
Churchill: I’m sorry madam, I didn’t realise it was your turn
I’m beginning to understand why the crass bully, Johnson has such hero worship for Churchill.
The room where we keep our washing machine, tumble dryer, spare sink etc is known as the “futility room”.
And at work the other day we were talking about the cyber attack at Capita and how they were having to “clean” all their many servers.
“How do you even do that?” someone asked.
“Bit by bit, I guess” someone replied.
Here’s our futility room.
Have you moved one corner of the sign into the sun because gently its touch awoke it once?
Two witticisms I remember from a while back:
Ricky Gervais when asked what he thought of Piers Morgan interviewing the Taliban replied “I’ve lost all respect for them”.
Stephen Colbert commented on the Republican arguments against impeaching Trump:
“So you just want to let him off scot-free for insurrection because he’s no longer in power? That’s like acquitting Jeffrey Dahmer because he’s full.”
Gervais made me smile again recently:
“If AI starts becoming a burden, just unplug it.
Like we did with nan.”
I made a very laboured in joke at one of the first Word Mingles, when they were a thing years ago.
The much loved @bargepole here would often write posts in the third person.
As I was the third person to arrive on that evening, I piped up to the other two (I forget who) with ‘Hi, I’m Beezer. But I should be Bargepole…’.
Not a titter.
I was with a group of friends at one of our houses years ago, listening to music and generally ‘hanging out’. One of my pals decided he was going to construct (yet another) dodgy cigarette and the following exchange occurred
Pal: “I’m going to do something now to make everyone happy”
Me: “what, are you going home?”
We were all quite out of it at the time and the giggles went on for quite a while.
This site just came up on a side panel of my computer’s Facebook. Which is really, really weird. It’s not like I was googling “witty comebacks” or “Winston Churchill”. I hadn’t actually googled anything at all. Is this likely to be just pure coincidence or some sort of algorithm linkage involving this thread, or what? Genuine question. I’m curious.
https://en.winteriscoming.net/view/?id=historic-comebacks-wic
Algorithm, everything you do is monitored
That’s not especially witty
I was on a course for a part-time job once with a retired policeman. During a break he got into an anecdote about a heavy drinking problem at a station he’d once been at. Seemingly, a nearby pub, The Elephant, had a private room for the rozzers. ‘So,’ I said, ‘you’re telling us the problem was the room in The Elephant?’
👏
I heard someone in the media recently – I can’t recall where – recalling a fantastic newspaper headline from the 70s, for a story about the then Labour Party leader being appointed to some armaments quango: ‘Foot heads arms body’. 😀
Marvellous
When my brother, a maths teacher, married a drama teacher, I put a line in my best man speech:
“Both teachers, when you have kids they’ll grow up knowing how to pretend to be a tree… with square roots”.
A critic once told Gore Vidal that one of his novels was meretricious and Gore pointedly replied:
Really? Well, meretricious and a happy New Year to you too!
Also recycled by the Gatiss/Moffat axis in Sherlock. On that occasion they gave it to Lestrade.
Eric Morecambe, when asked “What would the two of you be if you weren’t comedians?” allegedly retorted “Mike and Bernie Winters”.
Harsh but fair, I feel.
‘Aw Christ,’ groaned one Scot from high up in the gods, ‘there’s TWO of ’em!’
@Black-Type
Review of Eric and Ernie’s first BBC series in the early 50s “Definition of television: The box M and W’s career was buried in”
I seem to recall a story about M and W that said Eric carried a copy of that review (or maybe one equally bad) in his wallet for the rest of his life, using it as inspiration to ensure they always produced top-quality material. If he wasn’t happy with a script, the story goes, he would unfold that review, read it aloud, and insist the gags had to be improved.
My best mate – not the most thoughtful of chaps – declared, in all seriousness, that he disliked the film Titanic because, “It was too predictable – I just knew that boat was going to sink.”
At least he’s one up on an early viewer who complained as she was leaving a screening, “ I wouldn’t have come if I knew the ship was going to sink.”
Unlikely source perhaps but I thought Keir Starmer’s line to the PM the other week was pretty good. Along the lines of “The Primeminister entered into a two-horse race – and somehow managed to come third!”.
And another one which had a tinge of cruelty about it
“Perhaps the job is just….too big for him.”
Starmer is only an inch taller than Sunak, hardly a giant.
Didn’t realise that @alias. I thought KS was much taller than that.
It’s 2” taller actually. Politicians are always shorter than you think. Boris Johnson is 5’7” and not a single member of his cabinet was taller than 5’10”, IIRC.
Btw – Sunak’s claimed height is 5’6” but he looks smaller to me. I suspect he’s closer to 5’4” from pictures I’ve seen of him next to women of roughly that height. Though his extreme slightness clouds the issue: when pictured next to most other men, he looks as if someone’s taken an average sized man and dragged the corner resize handle diagonally downwards – but looks quite normal sized when pictured alone. (I have the opposite issue: I’m quite tall, but because I’m extremely broad-shouldered, with a big neck and head, I look shorter than I am. People only notice I’m bigger than them when I’m standing right next to them. Annoying.)
The tallest PMs in recent history are Blair at 6’0”, and Cameron at 6’1” – both examples of people who are, unusually, taller than you’d expect. Politicians are often small men, which probably explains why they’re politicians.
You say that but Abe Lincoln was 6’4” (nearly 7ft with this hat on) and Australia’s own Pete Garrett – the BABH – is also 6’4”.
I also read that Winston Churchill was the same height as Sunak. Is the door of number 10 on a skirting board?
I *thought* Abraham Lincoln was 8ft tall though. Checkmate.
Well, I have stood next to Gordon Brown in a queue and he was the same height as me, six foot, which is what I would have expected. I have also walked past Ed Miliband a couple of times, and he was also my height. I know there is the myth of the Napoleon complex, which falls flat when you find out he was average height for his era. Most recent American presidents seem at least six feet, which will be bad news for Kamala Harris’s chances.
The one that does surprise me is authors -when Daniel Day Lewis played Kafka, he was told it was unlikely casting, and he had to point out Kafka was around six foot. Chekhov about 6 4. I suppose in their cases it’s their bad health and early deaths that made me think of them as sleight figures.
The other thing that will badly dent Kamala Harris’s chances is her all-round uselessness as VEEP these last three years.
I’m not arguing with you by any means, @jaygee, but I’m curious to know how one measures uselessness in a Vice-President. Aren’t they all pretty much useless?
Pretty useless is pretty much on the money.
It’s scary to think that this Dan Quayle in a dress is just a frail old man’s arrhythmic heartbeat away from being POTUS
To quote Selina Meyer:
“Did the President call?”
Collective staffers:
No!
Charles 1st: 5 foot 4 inches later 4 foot 10 inches.
How tall are you saying Starmer is? I’ve met him, and he ain’t 5′ 8″,
Hard not to conclude from your record of opinions on him that if he were obviously 6’5” you’d find a way to call him a shortarse, though 😉
“he looks as if someone’s taken an average sized man and dragged the corner resize handle diagonally downwards”.
That’s a brilliant description, and I will only be able to think of him like this from now on. Thank you.
Bit hard on yourself there, Bob. I’m confident you’re not annoying every time you stand next to someone..
Grudging *you vill go on ze list* applause
I once found myself stood next to Michael Gove in Pret A Manger on Horseferry Road*. He’s bigger than the weed he seemed (to me) on the telly. He looked a broad barrel chested f*****r.
Amber Rudd is, or certainly was when I saw her, an Amazonian.
Michael Heselitne is immense in all directions.
Eric Pickles is not as big as you might think but when I shared a lift with him I felt there was no danger of it getting stuck between floors.
*he was buying orange juice
There’s a rural county Cork train station that is a couple of miles from the town it services.
Overheard conversation I was told about:
Tourist: Gee, why didn’t they put the station in the town centre?
Station employee: Well, they considered it sir, but that would leave the station two miles from the train tracks…
That reminds me of when my bag didn’t arrive on the belt after an Air NZ domestic flight. When I spoke to the staff member at the airport, I said it was the first time this had happened in the 24 years I’d been in New Zealand.
He replied “Well, we like to get to everyone eventually”.
Had a 4 hour stopover in St John’s airport once in Newfoundland. I asked at the information desk if there was a bus from the airport to downtown, the answer “Well there’s a bus, but it doesn’t go from the airport and it doesn’t go downtown”
The first US citizens I met were like living cliches – ‘stout’, plaid shorts, white sneakers – in the breakfast car of a sleeper train from London to Edinburgh, when I was 8 or 9 years old.
We pulled into Berwick-upon-Tweed, where you can see the remains of the medieval castle on the hill (not that one) above the station.
“Hun, why did they build the rail line so close to the castle? Wouldn’t the sound of the trains keep them awake at night?”
On a similar theme, queueing up to kiss the Blarney Stone after negotiating the particularly tricky ancient spiral stairs to the summit of the Castle, I overheard some of our colonial cousins in similar attire loudly querying why no-one had installed an elevator.
I’ve also heard stories of visitors remarking that it was very convenient that they built Bunratty Castle so close to the motorway. But I suspect they are just that – stories.
My daughter was just telling us about a new teacher at school. As she said “and she’s called” she had a bit of a coughing fit. As the Dad at the table, I asked how she was spelling that. My wife laughed. And why not?
That reminds me of my favourite Fry and Laurie sketch (except for the Saffron Walden one)
You have to watch to the end to get the full majesty.
That is very good indeed.
Early 90s and I was on a course which entailed all participating students to do a 30 minute health education talk to the rest of the class. Fairly nerve wracking for all involved. Male impotence was the subject addressed by one girl. She then referred to research indicating that warm temperatures endured by bakers in their everyday working environment was a factor in making them prone to said ailment. At this I raised my hand in the air and suggested this was ironic as they are routinely “putting buns in the oven”. The class dissolved into laughter for a couple of minutes. She didn’t, in fact she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the course
Just remembered a conversation that spiralled into silliness due to someone entering the conversation partway through – and mishearing the word “ABBAtars” .
*Abattoirs?! In a show? On stage? Really?”
At a jazz gig last night, veteran saxophonist Art Themen apologised for picking up his soprano sax for a number, saying they were notorious for going out of tune in the upper register. He said the instrument had been called “the ill wind that does nobody any good”.
Older, and slightly better version from a James Bond book from the 50s or 60s in which a musician Bond was talking to described his sax as “an ill wind which nobody blows any good”
Originally, it was the French Horn, according to Sir Thomas Beecham. In the 1947 movie, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Danny Kaye claimed it was the oboe. Both are difficult to play but at least the oboe is an actual woodwind instrument.
😉
I did one the other day and the beauty of it was that I didn’t think up the punchline until after I’d done the set up, so I got to laugh at it as well. More than anyone else, unfortunately, but that’s often the way with my jokes.
We were doing the quiz in the Melbourne Herald Sun. There’s a question: Helen of Troy was ‘The face that xxxx a thousand ships”
“Sunk,” said a friend.
“Well, she was a big girl,” I said, surprising myself.
“How do you know that?”
“It’s obvious – have you seen the size of her horse?”
That’s a great one, particularly off the cuff. I can imagine Eric and Ern saying that.
I was listening to Richard Herring’s podcast the other day with Lee Mack and a similar Eric and Ern exchange happened in the chat. They were discussing historical kings and queens.
“Do you know why he was called Richard the Lionheart?”
“Yes! His parents liked the name Richard.”