Christmas funny books

Bevis Hillier Reading reviews of new books of poetry, I am staggered at how seldom the critics quote frompoems they are assessing. Describing what a poet is like, without quoting him, is like trying to describe a smell. In the latter exercise, you can get somewhere by using such adjectives as `fragrant', 'acrid' or Tour; but only by unstoppering a phial and waggling it under a person's nose can you convey what the scent is like. It's a similar case with poetry. You can prattle away about felicitous rhymes (assuming there are any), striking imagery, passion, depth and concentration of meaning (John Betjeman called poetry `the shorthand of the heart); but if you fail to give an example of the verse, you can achieve little more than someone who says a violet smells sweet or damns the odours from a sewage farm as 'effluvia'.

Much the same principle applies to reviewers of humorous (and would-be humorous) books. It is no use my telling you that X's book made me 'laugh out loud' because your sense of humour may diverge exponentially (wonderful bluffer-critic word) from mine. But once I give you a taster of the book you can decide whether your funny-bone has been hit hard enough to land you in A and E.

I use the word 'taster', partly because 'sample' sounds like a hospital specimen, and partly because a sense of humour is very like taste (in art, interior decoration and so on): we all think we have it, but there is no way I can prove mine is better than yours. In this review I am going to quote rather a lot. From the defensive apologia you have just read, you will kindly accept that I'm not just being lazy, a Constance Spry of Other Men's Flowers. I'm hoping that some of the jokes that made me laugh will wring the odd guffaw from you.

Every year, one funny book seems to stand out from all the others. This year, it's Do Ants Have Arseholes? — and 101 Other Bloody Ridiculous Questions by Jon Butler and Bruno Vincent (Sphere, £7.99). This is a rip-roaring parody of the New Scientist/Profile book Does Anything Eat Wasps? — and 101 Other Questions (2005). (If you're wondering what the answer to that question is, it is: Yes: dragonflies, big wasps, beetles, moths, skunks, badgers, weasels, bears, bats and very stupid birds.) The questions, alone, that Butler and Vincent have dreamt up are comic enough: 'If a deaf man goes to court, is it still called a hearing?' How easy is it to fall off a log?' Why is only half the clock used in Countdown?' 'What do NASA scientists say instead of "It's not rocket science, you know"?' If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown?' Why did Hitler have such a silly moustache?' My housemate claims to be indifferent to Marmite. Is he weird?' How long is a "yonk"?' and 'Why is there only one Monopoly Commission?' (Actually, boys, it was the Monopolies and Mergers Commission; which is now the Competition Commission.) But some of their answers are inspired, among them, the answer to the title question: Although it has been rendered useless by evolution, contrary to popular belief the humble ant does have an arsehole. It is, in fact, the smallest orifice in any known creature ... The sound of an ant breaking wind has been recorded as the lowest decibel-level achievable in nature. (Prof. Humbert Unself created a fake ant entirely from porcelain which emitted a quieter one.) The enjoyable pretence is that the questions are asked in a magazine called The Old Git, sometimes with several different answers offered by imaginary readers with spoof names. Some of the answers are teasingly long, others laconic, such as 'Is it possible to bore someone to death?' It depends how big the drill is.

Among the answers that meander on, divertingly, is that to Are there any undiscovered colours?', which begins like this: I have been furiously mixing paints ever since this question appeared in last month's issue, and am astonished and proud beyond measure to be able to announce that I have discovered what I believe to be an entirely new colour. By mixing blue paint and red paint, I have come up with a wonderfully rich, regal hybrid that is somehow warmer and more mellow than blue, and cooler and more elegant than red...

As you will have noticed, some of the answers are on the ribald side: they may not be to the taste of Great-Aunt Dulcie. Here are two rival answers to the question, Are "crabs" related to crabs?'

I'm sure that a biologist would say 'no'. However, when my husband returned with 'crabs' from his annual work conference in Eastbourne, I can report that he moved sideways rapidly, turned red and screamed when the pan of boiling water hit him, so perhaps they're not so different after all.

(Emily Drinkwell, Dover).

I have no idea about the natural history of crabs, but I would like fellow readers to learn from my terrible mistake, which ruined my sister's wedding day. For the record, 'crab paste' from the chemist's is intended to be smeared on your crotch, to kill pubic lice. 'Crab paste' from the supermarket tastes considerably better in sandwiches.

(Casey Fink, Vancouver).

On the surface, you might think that Paul Heiney's new book, Do Cats Have Belly Buttons? And Answers to 244 Other Questions on the World of Science is a similar kettle of fish to the one I've just reviewed. It, too, is full of silly, and often disgusting questions — 'Do people with sticky-out ears have better balance?'; 'Why is snot green?'; 'Can chewinggum get "tangled up" in your intestine?'; 'Are the horns on the heads of giraffes lightning conductors?'; 'Can snails talk to each other?'; 'Do birds have earwax?'; and `If you gave seagulls Alka-Seltzer, would they explode?' The big difference between the two books is this: while Butler's and Vincent's answers are as preposterous as their questions, and are meant to make you laugh, Heiney is intent on giving pukka scientific answers, by no means all rib-tickling. The answer to the title question is: 'Cats do indeed have a belly button and you'll find it pretty much in the same place as on humans —just below the rib cage.' Heiney even attempts a serious answer to 'What's the funny-bone?'

Don't laugh when I tell you, but the funny bone is not a bone at all. It is a nerve which runs through a groove in a bone called the ulna, one of two bones in the lower arm ...

Though it's not exactly a bundle of fun, the book is very ably written — a worthy successor to Heiney's earlier work, Can Cows Walk Down Stairs? (I'm afraid that — as with the birds and wax query, the eardrum conundrum — that is yet another question to which I was never aching to know the answer.) Taken together, these two question-andanswer books, as different from each other as 'upper' and 'downer' pills, stirred a distant memory. After a while I realised what it was: a passage from Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky is addressing Prince Myshkin (the 'Idiot').

'Well, you are a strange fellow,' he said. 'And really, was your reply a serious one, Prince?'

'Wasn't your question a serious one?' retorted the prince in surprise.

They all began to laugh.

There is no ambiguity about the next two books under review: Mission Accomplished': Things Politicians Wish They Hadn't Said by Matthew Parris and Phil Mason (J R Books, £12.99) and Mardy Grothe's Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History's Great Wits and Wordsmiths (also J R Books, £12.99). They are both out to make you chuckle, and both succeed. I found I knew about half the quotations in each already. The trouble is, the half I don't know may be the half you do know — in which case, apologies for pressing on you the examples which follow.

Readers of this magazine don't need to be told who Matthew Parris is, but they might need to know that his co-compiler Phil Mason 'graduated from the LSE and works in the Civil Service'. Here are a few of the lulus the two men have garnered.

How nice to see you all here.

(Roy Jenkins, addressing prisoners on a visit to a London jail).

Ah, I must have been reading it upside down. I thought it was 81, which did seem most unfair.

(Unidentified bishop in the House of Lords, asked if he would support the 18 compromise in the coming debate on the age of homosexual consent, 1994).

How on earth do the birds know it is a sanctuary?

(Conservative MP Sir Keith Joseph, visiting a bird sanctuary).

Of course we are not patronising women. We are just going to explain to them in words of one syllable what it is all about.

(Lady Olga Maitland, founder of Women for Peace and a Conservative MP).

This is anarchy gone mad.

(Unidentified union official, complaining that action by another union had been taken without consultation, during the Winter of Discontent, 1979).

Where would Christianity be if Jesus had got eight to 15 years with time off for good behaviour?

(James Donovan, New York senator, supporting capital punishment, 1975).

A pissometer?

(Prince Philip, at the top of his voice, visiting a winery in New South Wales, being shown a piezometer, a device measuring water depth in soil, March 2000).

Just occasionally Parris and Mason are unfair to politicians, pillorying them for imagined verbal Mises which were clearly intended as humorous sallies. Norman St John-Stevas (Lord St John of Fawsley) must have had his tongue in his cheek when he said, in 1979: But I mustn't go on singling out names. One must not be a name-dropper, as Her Majesty remarked to me yesterday.

I think Sir Geoffrey Howe and Lord Jenkins had their respective wits about them when they said (1986 and 1989): 'The future, where most of us are destined to spend the rest of our lives...' and 'I've found the future rather difficult to predict before it happens.' (When Jenkins uttered that, of course, he said `pwedicf.) And surely a Labour spin-doctor, talking to the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley during the general election campaign of 1997, was being ironic when he said: 'You want spontaneity? Spontaneity is scheduled for Wednesday.'

The authors miss an unfortunate turn of phrase that Parris immortalised in one of his parliamentary sketches. I forget the exact details, but there was a debate in the House of Lords that involved dogs — perhaps it related to dangerous dogs, or dog licences. And one noble lord piped up and said something like: 'My lords, we need to be sure that this Act is on all fours with European law.'

The author blurb on Dr Mardy Grothe's Viva la Repartee tells us that he is the author of acymoronica and Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You, and that he is 'a regular broadcaster'. (Must be eating his AllBran.) It does not tell us his nationality, but I suspect it is American, because he writes 'mustache' instead of our 'moustache' and 'snicker' instead of the 'snigger' more common in Britain. Also, it is a real downside of this book that among the smart retorts from the sporting world, masses are from baseball, but only one from our sort of football, and one from Welsh rugby. In 1969, when I wrote a book on posters, the American publisher demanded that I illustrate as many American posters as French ones. Considering that France had Lautrec, Cheret and other masters, while the best the United States could offer was the less inspired Will Bradley, that was a daft instruction — as daft as it would have been to insist that a writer on jazz should include as much French jazz as American. More recently, I have been concluding negotiations for a book on 'Bad Taste'. Once again, there is the parrot-cry: 'Is America adequately represented?' I have been able to reply: 'In this field, America leads the world.'

However, it is only in the sports section that Grothe falls down. In the rest of the book, he is very cosmopolitan and has corralled for us some delicious ripostes. Field-Marshal Lord Montgomery — usually the butt of jokes rather than the origin of them — scores high marks. One day he hopped into a London cab. 'Where you headed, mate?' asked the driver. 'Waterloo.' When the cabbie looked back and asked, 'Station?' Monty replied: 'Certainly. We're a bit late for the battle.'

For many years a Franciscan priest named Andrew Agnellus advised the BBC on religious affairs. When a producer sent him a memo asking how he might ascertain the official Roman Catholic view of heaven and hell, Agnellus wrote back: Die.'

I like the story of Alfred Hitchcock's going through French customs. An inspector looked quizzically at the occupation stated on his passport: 'Producer'. The official asked, 'What do you produce?' Hitchcock: 'Gooseflesh.' Grothe might also have included the rejoinder of Gilbert Harding, the irascible television star of the 1950s. Arriving at American immigration controls, he was required to fill in a long form, on which one of the questions was: 'Have you ever tried, or do you intend to try now, to undermine the Constitution of the United States?' Harding scrawled: 'Sole object of visit.' He was refused entry.

There are some mistakes. When, in 1842, the British commander Charles James Napier captured Sindh (in modern Pakistan) he did not, as stated here, send Lord Ellenborough the one-word message Peccavf (Latin for 'I have sinned.') British generals are rarely that clever: it was a joke by Punch. And Grothe has Noel Coward being greeted at an airport by journalists: A reporter from the newspaper the Sun hollered out, 'Mr Coward, have you anything to say to the Sun?' Coward replied pleasantly: 'Shine.'

In the version I've heard of that story, which I tend to believe, it was the evening paper the Star (now defunct) that greeted Coward, whose instruction was: 'Twinkle.'

Charlie Crocker's Still Lost in Translation: More Misadventures in English Abroad (R H Books, £10) is not quite as funny as his Lost in Translation, which I praised in an earlier Christmas batch. It is again a collection of notices and brochures in garbled English, found mostly in foreign countries. Perhaps Crocker used up the best ones in the first anthology; but there are still many gigglemaking boo-boos, among them: In a Japanese car park: 'Please get a punch at window No. 2'. Notice in the bathroom of a cruise liner, UK: 'To Flush, Push Knob Behind the Seat.' In a small hotel in Cornwall, UK: Will any guest wishing to take a bath please make arrangements to have one with Mrs Harvey.' In Shanghai: 'Please do not dive in hotel swim pond. Bottom of pond very hard, and not far from top of water. Please do not crack skull on bottom of pond. If do so alarm hotel manager at once.' In Munich: 'In your room you will find a minibar which is filled with alcoholics.' From a guidebook to Buenos Aires: 'Several of the local beaches are very copular in the summer.' In a cable car cabin, Huangshan, China: 'Smoking, hubbub, spit are forbidden in cabin.' At Northampton General Hospital: 'Family Planning Advice: Use Rear Entrance.'

A lot of the howlers appear on menus. Not everyone will be tempted by Turdey slices' (Tenerife); 'Worm pig stomach' (China); 'Grilled sideburn of pork' (Madeira); or 'Turkish Sweat of the Day' (Erzerum). But perhaps one might be by 'Martini and nipples' in a hotel on Lake Garda.

Those of us Brits who do not want to get our culottes in a twist can turn to Mark Daniel's French Letters and the English Canon (Timewell Press, £9.99). The blurb about the author tells us that he lives in Exeter and that his books include the racing thrillers Under Orders, Pity the Sinner and The Devil to Pay. Impressive as they are, these credentials would not necessarily qualify somebody to pontificate about the French language, but Daniel's publishers tell me he spent a gap year in France. He certainly seems to know his stuff and presents it in a relaxed, amusing way. You catch the flavour of it early in the book: Adieu — a last 'goodbye' — has been part of the English language since the 14th century when it was correctly spelled `adew'. The reversion to the original French spelling is needless and pretentious, but not so offensive as the resultant adoption of the French pronunciation (sort of), which resulted in that memorably ghastly rhyme in The Sound of Music, 'Adieu, adieu, to yeu and yeu and yeu.' How Richard Rodgers must have mourned Lorenz Hart at that moment...

Daniel gives us gueule de bois — 'mouth of wood', meaning 'hangover', but omits the caustic put-down 'Kt gueulel (Shut your trap!' Could have been 'Shut your von Trapp' in the case of The Sound of Music adieus). In the 1970s, American friends of mine rented, every summer, the Chateau St Gilles at Chindrieux on the banks of the Lac du Bourget in France. The nearest neighbour was Jacques Chirac — then not even mayor of Paris, let alone M. le President. In the summer, Chirac brought his family to a little house by the lake and invited our party round for drinks. One of his daughters, perhaps a little elevated by the champagne, said something that annoyed him, and he snapped, Ta gueulel My American host was shocked that he should rebuke her, in public, so roughly.

Immediately after esprit de corps comes esprit de l'escalier — `the wit of the staircase', 'an indispensable phrase for the retorts which elude one at the dinner table or over drinks but spring to mind only when they have lost the immediacy essential to wit.'

It's a very useful phrase, as there is no English equivalent; but my doughty French dictionary by Paul Robert and Jan Collins has 'esprit d'escalier', without the definite article — 'to be slow on the repartee'. Which version is right? Or are both acceptable? For elucidation, I wrote to the French embassy and received a helpful reply from Paul Fournel, whose formal title is Attaché Culturel pour le Livre. He says that either is OK, but that Mark Daniel's version is 'maybe a little more common'. He adds: 'I guess the first apparition of this expression was in Diderot's Paradoxe sur le Comedien.'

I'm not up in pop music since the Beatles, but I have got a lot of laughs from Tom Reynolds's Touch Me, I'm Sick: The 52 Creepiest Love Songs You've Ever Heard (Portrait, £9.99). This is a more enjoyable sequel (or sick-well) to the same author's I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard (2005). The title of the new book is derived from 'Touch Me, I'm Sick', a song by Mudhoney — 'an unwashed Seattle grunge outfit'. Reynolds thought it would be nice to follow up a book of depression with one of obsession. 'Modern romance,' he writes, 'has turned into a cruel spectator sport...'

Each entry in the book is divided into 'The song' and 'Why it's creepy'. In most cases one hardly needs the exegesis. This is part of what Reynolds has to say about 'Don't Stop Swaying' — written, composed and performed by Sophie B. Hawkins, released 1992 (no chart position): Welcome to the creepiest and worst love song ever written ... Once you hear it you Won't Stop Barfing Until She Stops Singing ...When I started the song it creeped me out right away because I had it on headphones and the first thing I heard was Hawkins whispering something like 'looks good, put it in your hair' or 'cooks food, good with angel hair', something like that, followed by those chimes you hear in films about children who kill their parents with pitchforks.

In Reynolds's view, the song is about incest between Hansel and Gretel.

He sometimes breaks into verse to convey a song's awfulness, as in the case of 'Break Me' (released 2002, words and music by Jewel Kilcher, performed by Jewel). The effect is of an Edith Sitwell run amok: Your fleshy pistons embrace my shimmering shell like the simian peeling a gossamer breadfruit with its monstrous palms of hairy digits ... Cripple me, you ape you.

Possibly a case can be made for reviewing dreadful songs in dreadful verse, kitsch feeding upon kitsch — kitsch in sync, as it were.

If it's laugh-out-loud humour you're after, you can't go wrong with P. G. Wodehouse; but I am disappointed by The Wit and Wisdom of P G. Wodehouse (Hutchinson, £9.99), compiled and edited by Tom King, as it is so titchy. Lines one loves are missed out, including, 'Lord Emsworth made the short journey to the end of his wits.' But of course, even in this tiny sampling-flask, there are winners. Here are two favourites: Years before, when he was a boy, and romantic as most boys are, his lordship had sometimes regretted that the Emsworths, though an ancient clan, did not possess a Family Curse. How little he had suspected that he was shortly to become the father of it.

He looked haggard and care-worn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to put cyanide in the consommé, and the dinner gong due any minute.

Genius! Notice that he doesn't just put 'poison' or 'soup' — like all good writers, he is specific.

Returning for a moment to Do Ants Have Arseholes?, this is among the questions the authors ask: 'Is laughter the best medicine?' Well, before reading the books here reviewed, I was suffering from chronic psittacosis, an incipient boil and athlete's foot. I can only say that, after reading them, I have been able to cancel my return ticket to Lourdes.