.

records of the first Rhubarb go as far back as 1925 when while farmer giles rhubarb was digging in his garden one day he stumbled up on a funny shaped red thingy. he pocketed it and cut it up and spread it across his field in a few weeks he had a hole garden of the stuff. to cut a long story short he sold it at his local market and it was a instant success. Rhubarb is nither a vegtable nor is it a fruit its a vegtuit the only vegtuit in the known universe.

Candles are associated with many religious rituals because it was the practice for many churchmen in ancient times to compare the size of their penile appendages, the guy with the longest one becoming bishop.
Since disputes often arose - to facilitate accurate measurement , casts would be taken of the extended membra with a malleable substance which would set after a lapse of time.
Jealous priests would set fire to their rivals' casts -thus arose the practice of lighting them.
From this scenario emanated the expression 'to get on my wick' uttered by clerics when inviting maidens to participate in genital gymnastics.
Incidentally -the area of a bishop's domain came to be known ,for obvious reasons,as a 'bishopric' - being a combination of bishop + p/rick.

Next : Grandfather clocks.

The big hands pointing straight up are the reason why many ventriloquist dolls ultimately have to wear a truss.

Next: Lord Charles

Glad you liked it Cobblaz!
Just giving this thread a lift. They are lasting less than 12 hours these days.

When the whale ship Essex set sail from Nantucket Sound in 1819, not even the young Edgar Allan Poe could have foreseen the horrors that would be visited on the ill-fated crew. After a brief stop at Tenerife to restock with provisions and duty free rum and tobacco, Captain George Pollard set course for the Pacific Ocean. He would be one of only eight survivors of the original 20 crew who would live to curse the day that they rounded Cape Horn. On November 20, 1820, while the majority of the crew, including Captain Pollard, were away in most of the whaleboats, an extraordinary event unfolded. A huge sperm whale, possibly enraged by the hammering going on aboard ship, rammed and stove in the ship. The skeleton crew scrambled to launch the remaining whaleboats and salvage what water and provisions they could. When the whalers returned to the ship, the decision was taken to abandon the stricken vessel and cast themselves adrift, with the intention of attempting to make for South America, 1500 miles east of their position. Almost immediately, they ran into problems. Storms battered the inadequate whaleboats, which required constant repair. The hardtack, which was being rationed amongst the crew, became contaminated with seawater, raising the sodium levels of the crew and worsening the thirst and dehydration of every man. The Galapagos tortoises that they had retrieved from the ships hold had long since been devoured. As hope that rescue would come drained away, one of the men spied land. Landing on uninhabited Henderson Island on December 20th, the crew began a desperate search for a source of water and food. The latter came in the shape of the many birds that they caught and, just as things were looking hopeless, a spring was located in a rock just above sea level and the men hurriedly filled their water barrels.

Captain Pollard soon realised that they could not remain on Henderson for long and took the agonising decision to set sail once more. 3 of the men refused to enter the boats, preferring to take their chances on the island. The rest set sail on the day after Christmas, 1820. By this time, rations had been halved, and the men were severely starved and dehydrated. On January 10, 1821, Matthew Joy was the first man to die and his body was committed to the sea the following day. The next day, a brief squall separated Owen Chases boat from the other two forever. By this time, any effort beyond merely lying in the bottom of their boats was monumental, and the men could not muster the effort required to find their companions. Chases boat proceeded south. On January 18, the second man died. He, too, was buried at sea. But, when Isaac Cole became the third man to die on February 8, rather than commit his body to the ocean, the men readily agreed to keep it for food. This grisly supply lasted until February 15, when all seemed lost. Then, incredibly, on February 18 the British brig Indian spied and rescued the 3 men.

After the separation of Chases boat, the other two boats remained together for some time. By January 14, however, one of the boats was entirely exhausted of supplies. The other ran out of food on January 21. In the following days, 4 of the men died and were eaten by the surviving crew. Then, on January 28, the two boats were separated and the third boat, along with its three men, was never seen again. On February 1, Captain Pollards boat again ran out of food. Members of the crew suggested the drawing of lots to see who should be the next to be eaten. Pollard was dead set against the idea, but eventually gave way to his crew. Ironically, Pollards 17-year-old cousin Owen Coffin drew the shortest straw. After uttering a brief prayer, he was shot and his body devoured. On February 11, Coffin was followed by Barzillai Ray, who was also shot and eaten. Pollard and the other surviving man, Charles Ramsdell, were rescued by the whale ship Dauphin on February 23. The three men who had chosen to remain on Henderson Island were rescued on April 5.

Pollard and Ramsdell had been 95 days in an open boat. Chase and his companions had been 90 days adrift. They had travelled some 3500 miles since the wreck of the Essex 3 months previously. When the men were rescued, the evidence in the whaleboats told a harrowing tale. The bones of the devoured unfortunates littered the bottoms of the two boats, and the rescued men were reluctant to leave go of the finger bones on which they chewed to release the marrow inside.

Most amazing of all, however, was the legacy of this astonishing adventure. Herman Melville came to be told of this true story and used it as his inspiration for Moby Dick. In an attempt to distract himself while adrift, Ramsdell had taken to tapping on the stripped ribcage of Coffins skeleton with his finger bones and thereby invented the xylophone. And all ships at sea are mandated to carry a can opener. If this had been in force in 1820, then the crew of the whale ship Essex would have been able to sustain themselves on the 6 hundredweight of tinned bully beef and pineapple chunks that was carried in the hold. Still, Monty Python would have been without a sketch.

Next: Nantucket

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*poem

next:yodeling

The Splugen Pass is a bid used in auction bridge. It was developed by Heinrich Splugen at the Dusseldorf Club in 1959 .It involves uttering the word 'Pass' with the requisite pitch and intonation such as to convey to partner the exact nature of the hand held by the Splugener.
Foir instance a 'pass' produced with the hint of a splutter and a momentary hesitation says 'I have the King of Spades amd four diamonds to the ten'.
There is ,theoretically, no upper limit to the number of Splugenised 'passes' which can be assigned meanings according to partnership agreement.
It is not ,however,recommended for use if a player has a cold or is missing a number of front teeth.
In the hands (!) of skilled practitioners it constitutes one of the most sophisticated forms of **ing known to gamesters today.

Next: Weather vanes

As any aficionado of 1970s kids tv will tell you, Bingo was a member of the Banana Splits along with Fleegle, Drooper and Snork but it is Bingo the gorilla who is notably responsible for the break up of the group just as they were beginning to become global iconic figures.
Bingo was a skilled lyricist as can be seen by what he wrote for their theme song...'one banana, two banana, three banana four...five bananas make a bunch and so do many more' was described later by Paul McCartney as the definitive song about bananas and he has refused to pen on the subject ever since.
However,he always believed that his talents should be appreciated more and was incensed that Fleegle was the leader of the group and could be frequently heard beating his chest in the dressing room.
The final straw came when he was asked to become the shows agony aunt along with Drooper, the section was named 'Dear Drooper'. Furious Bingo hit back by giving out patently incorrect advice leading to the sad deaths of many American gas station attendants and the shows backers were forced to pull out.
Instead of falling into obscurity though Bingo invented a numbers game and named it after himself...the rest is history netting him billions in the process. He still finds time to write songs and was responsible for Serbia's winning entry in the last weekends Eurovision Song Contest.
His success was in stark contrast to Fleegle, who contracted mange in the 1980s and later scratched himself to death

next: Champion the Wonder Horse

Goodbye Mr Crisp was the failed updated version of Goodbye Mr *****and was based on the the exploits of Quentin Crisp and how he changed the lives of the young boys around him

next: Civil servants

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Great thread this. You back at large Strikes?

Mostly, rather need to get a job!

You remember Annie? She went out with Len Hutton's grandson (meant nowt to her) very briefly a couple of months back. Was rather amusing. Soph is in Thailand teaching. Oli and I are meeting up for a past masters pool tournament next week.

The Men from the Ministry was a British radio comedy series broadcast by the BBC between 1962 and 1977, and starring Wilfrid Hyde-White, Richard Murdoch and, from 1966, when he replaced Wilfrid Hyde-White, Deryck Guyler. Written by Edward Taylor with occasional contributions from John Graham and Ronald Baddiley.it ran for 14 series, totalling 147 half-hour episodes. A further 14 episodes were made by the BBC Transcription Service in 1980 but were never broadcast in the UK. Versions of the series were also made by YLE in Finland and Springbok Radio in South Africa.


The series was about the escapades of a team of lazy, bungling, incompetent Civil Servants, "Number One" - Roland Hamilton-Jones (Wilfrid Hyde-White) and later Deryck Lennox-Brown (Deryck Guyler), "Number Two" - Richard Lamb (Richard Murdoch), together with their rather dim, typo-prone, teenage Secretary Mildred Murfin (Norma Ronald), all watched-over by the lecherous, pompous, self-seeking Permanent Secretary Sir Gregory Pitkin (Roy Dotrice and later Ronald Baddiley), all members of the British Civil Service based in Whitehall, the stories centering on their fictitious "General Assistance Department" (analogous to the later "Department of Administrative Affairs" in Yes Minister), whose main function is to provide help and assistance to other overloaded governmental departments. Instead of providing 'assistance' the department manages to carry-out all manner of mix-ups, misunderstandings and general**-ups that invariably lead to a thundering telling-off from Sir Gregory, who sees his 'hard earned' Civil Service career and pension disappearing before his eyes.

The characters are portrayed as inept and ineffectual, subject to all the usual human flaws such as greed, selfishness and incompetence. However, malice was never a factor and all the humour was very light-hearted. There was also a little broad satire in many of the episodes. Later series tended to recycle older scripts, with just names of people and places being changed.

next: wikipedia

Encyclopaedia Britannica is shortly to be introduced in magazine form. Issue 1 (Aardvark to Aboriginal Dining Etiquette) will be a knock down price of 2.99 and will come with part 2 free AND a free binder. Each subsequent part will be sold weekly at 3.99 and collectors can rejoice in April 2016 when the final copy (Zoom lollies to ZZ Sputnik) will be delivered to their door.

next: The Russian Space Progamme

The Russian Spice Pogrom is one of Stalin's severest influences on Russia in the last century after he declared that all spices should be destroyed as being too much of a Western capitalist influence.
A public initiative for comrades to shop anyone suspected of adding anything other than beetroot to their borscht was particularly successful with over 200,000 budding chefs being sent to the Gulags...while ownership of saffron was an immediate firing squad offence. It is largely responsible for the total lack of Russian tv chefs to this day

next: Delia Smith

Farting in Lifts will be a demonstration sport at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Points will be awarded for Technical Difficulty (length of fart, timing with respect to opening and closing of lift doors, and diet in the 24 hours prior to the event) and Artistic Impression.

The event will be held in the 1,083ft, 80-storey China WTC Tower, currently under construction in the Chaoyang district of the city. The high-speed lifts have been specially designed with a hermetically sealed construction.

Next: death by suffocation.

Death by suffocation -otherwise known as woolmerisation- is apparently one of the most pleasant ways to die. This has been stated by many who have survived a near-suffocatory experience. Survivors have reported seeing bright lights and hearing celestial music as their access to air has diminished almost to zero.
Even those who have succumbed to suffocation -whether accidental or deliberate -are found to bear an appearance of serenity on their countenance after life has departed. Many prisoners on death row have petitioned to have their wretched lives terminated by suffocation but ,so far prison authorities have not acceded to such requests .

Next : Meteor strikes