Humour

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Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it. Bill Cosby

Selected Titles:

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - The Official Limerick Collection Jon Naismith (compiled by) Orion 1st 1998 This year sees the 25th anniversary of the legendary show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, the most listened-to comedy programme on British radio. To celebrate this achievement we publish this collection of the finest limericks from the thirty-odd series. I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, 'the antidote to the panel games', includes regular panellists Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and, until 1997, Willie Rushton, overseen by jazz supremo Humphrey Lyttelton. The limerick round is an institution (along with Mornington Crescent which we will get to another time via Nunhead, Tooting Bec and Theydon Bois). Starting with a single first line, panellists have over the years created some of the finest limericks in the English language. Considering the panellists' limited grasp of any language, this is some feat. Fine in a Fine wrapper. 342 gms £15.00

Dress to Kill Eddie Izzard Virgin 1st 1998 'Gandhi was pretty groovy and pretty thin. See, the trouble with Hitler was that he had a very bad moustache ... ' 'If people want to keep the monarchy, they have to change this idea of "ruling over the people" to "serving the people". Take the top 50 bluebloods and seed them like tennis, have play-offs ... ' Eddie Izzard was born in Yemen, has lived in Northern Ireland, Wales and London. and realised at a very early age that he wanted to be a performer. He is now the best and most inventive absurdist thinker extant, celebrating a world of cats who dig for oil, dogs who are unhappy with their wash, and Captain Non Sequitur. He calls his art 'carefully crafted rubbish', Dress To Kill, created by Eddie and comedy writer David Quantick, and featuring photography by Steve Double, gets deep inside the most original head in Britain. 'Bees make honey, which is so weird, because ... do earwigs make chutney? Do spiders make gravy?' Square format 4to. Mint in a Fine wrapper. 625 gms £50.00

Thelwell's Compleat Tangler  Norman Thelwell Methuen 1st 1967 Why do more men go fishing every weekend in Britain than go to football matches or attend any other sport? What do they really get up to when they abandon a warm bed before the crack of dawn, stuff a haversack with tins of assorted maggots, half a hundredweight of pulped bread and a folding campstool and disappear into the drizzle? , It is estimated that well over one and a half million wives wish they knew the answer, When Thelwell fell victim to this strange . phenomenon he made a startling discoveryanglers don't know either. It was clearly time that some sort of enquiry was conducted into the strange rituals of the cult .and its secrets exposed to the public gaze. After years of crawling through wet grass, 'conducting lonely vigils in distant torrents .and extracting needle-sharp hooks from .inaccessible parts of his clothing, Thelwell has at last presented his report. Compleat Tangler takes the lid off the world of Anglers and Angling. It deals with coarse fishing, game fishing and sea fishing and is designed to show the layman what he's missing, the angling widow what she's up against and the angler why he's so content to spend all his leisure hours with a wellington full of water. 8vo. Very slight sunning to the spine, otherwise the book is in Fine condition in a Fine wrapper. 370 gms £15.00

Full Moon  Wodehouse, P G Herbert Jenkins 1st 1947 The thought of being cooped up in Blandings Castle with Clarence, the Earl of Emsworth, the perennially youthful Galahad and with the Earl's younger son, Freddie Threepwood, openly appalled Colonel Wedge. It was, he grimly asserted, like being wrecked on a desert island with the Marx Brothers. But the arrival of Tipton Plimsoll at Blandings Castle considerably brightened the Colonel's horizon. For Tipton was a rich young American and rich young Americans were, in the Colonel's opinion, quite the most desirable companions for his daughter, Veronica, the dumbest beauty listed in the pages of Debrett. The stage was set for a great romance, or so the Colonel thought, and so it might have been had the knowledge of Freddie's erstwhile engagement to Veronica been withheld from the jealous Tipton, or if Prudence, the Earl's niece, had not been forcibly parted from her unsuitable lover, Bill Lister. On such incidents do great issues depend. However, Uncle Gaily, who combined the ready resource of a confidence trickster with the zeal of a cheerful crusader, intervened with an ingenious scheme to reunite the young lovers. It was a master-plan. How the plot miscarried at the crucial stage and in doing so caused a social and domestic revolution unparalleled in the history of Blandings Castle, is revealed in this most hilarious of chronicles. 8vo. Very minor wear to the dustwrapper. Mint in a VG++ wrapper. 270 gms £100.00

In His Own Write & A Spaniard in the Works  John Lennon Jonathan Cape reprinted together, 1st thus 1981 A volume combining John Lennon's two well-known books of poetry, prose and drawings, collected together for the first time. 'Worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and the British imagination.' The Times Literary Supplement 8vo. Very, very minor creasing to the dustwrapper edges, slight sunning to the wrapper, otherwise Fine in a VG++ wrapper. 345 gms £22.00

The Brigadier in Season Peter Tinniswood Macmillan 1st 1984 It is spring in Witney Scrotum - the swallows have returned to the golf ball museum - and the Brigadier, acerbic narrator of Tales From a Long Room and The Brigadier Down Under, is in reflective mood. Moving lightly over the horrors of the moving television screen, the British Empire, the glories ofthe 'summer game' and the groundsman's horse, he remembers with fondness - tempered by the occasional burst of outrage - such incidents as the day they discovered the Commodore's gardener was none other than Hermann Goering, the visit of the Holy Father and his fiendish leg tweak, the destruction ofthe Royal College of Umpires and many, many others. The Brigadier's eye is happily undimmed by the passage of years, and the results are hilarious. Minor sunning to the spine otherwise the book is in Fine condition in a VG++ wrapper. 330 gms £6.00

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