Midgetgems Comedy

Seeing the reports of Sven leaving Man City has just reminded me of a song that was used at Newsrevue during England’s last World Cup (Usually a good show if you like topical satire and happen to be anywhere near Little Venice in London - link on blogroll). I say last World Cup; I hope not! Anyway here’ s the script (.pdf)

Any Teen Will Do

If you hate horribly contrived puns, please … look away now.

A bull elephant goes into a brewery looking for a job. (it happens)

‘Okay’, says the foreman, ‘I need all those bags of malt shifted to this side of the yard’.

‘Great!’ says the elephant and gets to work picking them up with his trunk.

‘You’ll have to be quicker than that’, says the foreman, ‘put a bag on each tusk’.

‘I can’t do that, I’m a BULL elephant” says he, horrified.

‘So?’ says the foreman.

‘Well surely that would be malty tusking’.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7370151.stm

A Swiss amateur parachutist?! Now why does that remind me of the old ‘If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving isn’t for you’ joke? “Sorry, I’m afraid Kurt cannot zecuckooclockgewindlich until we again untangle him from ze ski lift” Who’s going to try out the replica of Da Vinci’s helicopter then? Prince William?

I couldn’t dance to save my life … but if I could it would have to be like this!
Sublime!

Soul Man (LIVE) by The Blues Brothers

Well yes …

Saw that a while back and it reminded me of a sign I saw during a trip to Rwanda in 1999. In the guest house loo in Kigali a sign read, ‘PLEASE, IF YOU USE IT -REMEMBER TO FLASH’

Well if you’re feeling flush (so immensely sorry) and not averse to a bit of charity, why not sponsor a toilet!

http://www.rsvptrust.co.uk/toiletsponsorship.html

I can’t let the day pass without a nod of deep respect and thanks to Humphrey Lyttelton, a man whose sense of humour has influenced my own through the years of listening to ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7367385.stm

I wonder what his tombstone will say. No doubt there will be mention of Samantha, when she goes, being laid under the ancient sod.

Thank you Humph and goodnight.

My parents used to play this game after a few glasses of vino … inventing characters (you can tell I’m frightfully working class, can’t you). Anyway, their legacy is my having to get up in the middle of the night to scribble them down. No wonder I’m always so flippin’ tired.

Robin Hoo - Little known outlaw (& brother of Red Riding Hoo)
Beau Peep - Well dressed car salesman
Dick Turnip - Parsnip thief
Claude Loadsamonet - Inventor of painting by numbers
Merthyr Nature - Druid
Khalif Richard - Intercultural relations spokesperson
Odmanna- Madonna’s identical twin
Jose Merino - Spanish shepherd
Don Juan II - Reluctant king of Spain
Michael Ajaxon - Bleach salesman
Jeminda Puddleduck -Venetian prostitute
Polly Popocatopetlon - Sukie’s hot Mexican cousin

and so on

I used to follow football more closely than I do these days but every now and again I go to see a game and reminisce about the good old days when people sang and a stand was just that. The constant peering round every corner en route to the ground to see if imminent stabbing was avoidable; that was always a laugh too. Anyway I still keep an eye on various footy forums and was drawn to a thread about the ‘ultimate team of cheats’. I noticed one blond-mopped character was missing but couldn’t remember his name so Googled a certain East Midlands city with the words ‘diving’ and ‘cheat’. Sure enough, there he was, second one down (ironically). Anyway, I found this as well!

Rats! Thought I’d just invented that title but no … Google never lies

I have to admit I did chuckle at the kid on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ last weekend when he delivered the gag about having a steering wheel stuck down his pants with the punchline ‘ it’s driving me nuts’. Best not get all Daily Mail squeamish and baulk at the loss of innocence etc., but there is something vaguely unpleasant about parents who shove their kids on stage, silently mouthing their routine from the wings. It’s a little like watching those insane dads at schoolboy football tournaments who, given the opportunity, would clout anyone for the slightest suggestion of unfairness. Britain’s got talent? Perhaps. Britain’s got scarily like the US? Definitely. Still, I suppose without talent shows and pushy parents we’d never have found the likes of Britney S and Kelly O and Paris H and then where would we be eh?

I was talking to a ventriloquist guy the other day. Or was I? It was a git disconcerting.

Copyright © Midgetgems Comedy 2007

Having the wool pulled over one’s eyes is an expression which, taken to its logical conclusion suggests that not only is the vision impaired but that audiologists everywhere receive steady employment removing the fluff from our ears. I would urge governments to initiate such ‘de-wadding’ programmes as a matter of urgency as I fear that a duping of grand proportions has been underway for the last couple of centuries at least in Western society if not the world over.

From the earliest years, man has sought to make music of the most pleasing kind and has largely succeeded in this venture except (and this is where I risk being stoned to death, but would be pleased to be martyred for the cause) with the solo violin. Somehow the world has been lulled senseless by the aptly named ’strains’ of this instrument. Let us consider the evidence:

The whole course of history would have been a lot more bloody than it actually was had David the shepherd boy attempted to soothe King Saul’s mood swings with a violin instead of the gentle harp. He learned the harp whilst out in the fields chucking stones to keep wolves away (perhaps the violin would have been more effective) but anyway, Saul would have had him disposed of and then who would have stood up to Goliath?

It is reputed that satan himself is not only a mean player of the thing but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the supplier of its name, a corruption of ‘ vile din’ or ‘viol din’ or ‘defiled thing’. Indeed, if it were true that it is an innocent and sweet instrument, why do we insist on calling it a Fiddle? We know very well as we walk into the concert hall (usually dressed in black for the inevitable funeral), that we are about to be subjected to such a hellish experience that we must pull the wool over our ears in order to survive. The unwitting violinist or fiddle agent may strive to bring us a technically brilliant performance and we may go to the bar during the interval and hastily gulp down over-chilled beer to calm the nerves. But we all pretend, rather like the crowd in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, that we are having a good time. For goodness sake, why? When a knife is scraped across a plate, we don’t all smile and call out for an encore! Can anyone really take their hands from their ears, put them on their heart and say they actually enjoyed a solo violin piece? Yes, they will tell you they were deeply moved but press them on that one next time and they will run out of the building in crisis.

Further evidence is found in the fiddle agent’s inability to cope with the ordeal. Menhuin has to spend hours standing on his head after performing in order to regain his senses and Kennedy, poor chap, made it obvious that he would rather have had a normal life. Vanessa Mae as a young gal, was obviously driven insane by the sound she made and cried for help by asking us to look at her as a woman, a heartfelt plea most men decided to hear. But watch them as they play; all have their eyes screwed tightly shut.

Curiously, the combined sound of this dreadful instrument produces a different and altogether more pleasing effect. This, I suspect is simply a more complex part of the Grand Fiddle (violins=violence?), a matter too profound for the simple human mind to grapple with and a matter in which we ask God to save us. In the meantime, I call upon those still left with any power of mortal reason to rise up in rebellion and dance with joy around communal bonfires made from violins. Return to your pianos, accordions, cellos, clarinets , French horns and Spanish guitars. Awake to the sounds of hissing spruce and crackling varnish and banish from this earth, the evil violin. Consign it to Obliviolin.

Copyright © Midgetgems Comedy 2007

Just about everyone comes out with a funny line every day and well, I think they’re too precious to simply vanish unnoticed so here are some from recent days:

My neighbourly Mrs Malaprop, explaining that some of her linen had gone a bit musty said, “my bedroom is a bit feisty this morning”.

A friend commented that ‘lots of people are wearing high vis. vests these days - which is good’. When I asked why, he said ‘well it makes them easier to run over’.

Another pal down the pub referred to men who remove their shirts at football matches: ‘you know - the social housing people’. Oh the warm glow to my heart knowing that snobbery is alive and well.

Gimme them throwaway lines - ‘pure unrefined gold’ as someone else once said.

Hi

Okay, suffice to say my parents didn’t call me Midgetgems but I was eating them when I had to choose a username (not eating my parents, that would be very silly and wrong, they were dead anyway … moving on then …) I started writing comedy in 2004 and well, it stuck. New to here so bear with me and we’ll get the funny stuff up soon.

Meanwhile, do please have a listen to some of me podcasties and let me know what you think.