Media Jokes - What The Papers Say - Page 2

Trouble with his trousers
TWA & the Turtle
Gas Bill
Installation Art
Bad day?
Trial by Jury
Posh Spice interview on Talk Radio 5th Oct. '99
MI6's best-kept secret: humour
Disorder In The Court
US Navy radio conversation

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Trouble with his trousers

Tokyo commuter Katsuo Katugoru caused havoc on a crowded tube train when his inflatable underpants unexpectedly went off. The rubber underwear was made by Katsuo himself, and designed to inflate to 30 times their original size in the event of a tidal wave.

"I am terrified of water, and death by drowning is my greatest fear" said Katsuo, 48. "Unfortunately I set them off accidently while looking for a boiled sweet on a rush hour train. They were crushing everybody in the carriage until a passenger stabbed them with a pencil."

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TWA & the Turtle

[This came originally from "Skyliner", the TWA staff magazine. It was reprinted in the Guardian, thence in "Funny Amusing & Funny Amazing" by Denys Parsons (1969), and now it's here.]

The pilot of a private aircraft called the control tower at Kansas City's municipal airport and said: "You might inform the TWA plane which is about to take off from the north end that the object near my position that looks like a rock is really a turtle on the runway."

Boeing 707 captain to control tower: Tower, we heard that transmission. Understand. One turtle crossing runway.

Control tower: Based on available pilot's report, turtle's course is oriented South-east, heading towards Gate 5.

707 captain: Kansas City tower, can you give us info on the turtle's speed and estimated time of runway clearance?

Control tower: Computer calculation indicates turtle speed around 200 feet an hour - maybe less in this quartering headwind. If threatened course and speed are maintained, runway should be clear in 8 minutes.

707 captain: Unable to wait due to fuel depletion. Will employ evasive action on takeoff roll.

Control tower: Roger, TWA. Cleared for takeoff. Be on alert for wake turbulence behind departing turtle.

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Gas Bill

Aparrently from the Rochdale Observer 15/10/86

Commenting on Mr. Arthur Purdy's complaint about estimated gas bills, a spokesman for Northern Gas said "We agree it was rather high for this time of year and think that Mr. Purdy may have been charged for the gas which was used up during the explosion that blew his house to pieces."

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Installation Art

Strange but true......
...from the newsletter of The Leuthold Group, an investment advisory firm that picked the following news bit from a German paper:

Gunther Burpus of Bremen, Germany, remained wedged in the cat door of his house for two days because passerby thought he was a piece of "installationart."

Burpus, 41, was using the cat door because he mislaid his keys. Unfortunately, he was spotted by a group of student pranksters who removed his trousers and underpants, painted his bottom orange, stuck a daffodil between his buttocks and erected a sign reading: "Germany Resurgent, an Essay on Street Art. Please Give Generously."

Passerby assumed Burpus' screams were part of the act, and it was only when an old man complained to the police that he was finally freed.

"I kept calling for help," Burpus said, "but people just said 'Very Good! Very Clever!' and threw coins at me."

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Bad day?

Just when you thought you were having a bad day. Enjoy!

• A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him.
• Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge -- killing him.
• Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.
• George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him.
• Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself in 1981. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.
• In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.
• A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but lay back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death.
• Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison.
• In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit-Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.
• While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a sports car. When the train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by punching the horse in the head. In consequence the horse's owner jumped down from his cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up to this sort of excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the sports- car. At this, the sports-car driver leaped out of his car and joined the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled. At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to sort out the claims.
• Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched.
• In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one of the men threw a french fry at another while they stood waiting for a train.
• Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife's incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled.
• An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday Express was climbing into the bathtub one afternoon when she remembered she had left some muffins in the oven. Naked, she dashed downstairs and was removing the muffins when she heard a noise at the door. Thinking it was the baker, and knowing he would come in and leave a loaf of bread on the kitchen table if she didn't answer his knock, the woman darted into the broom cupboard. A few moments later she heard the back door open and, to her eternal mortification, the sound of footsteps coming toward the cupboard. It was the man from the gas company, come to read the meter. "Oh," stammered the woman, "I was expecting the baker." The gas man blinked, excused himself and departed.

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Trial by Jury

1) In one indecent assault case at the Old Bailey, a nervous young lady was too shy to say what the accused had suggested, so the judge told her she might write it down. She wrote "Would you care for a screw?" and the note was handed to the first jury member. It was passed on round the jury but the last jury member was asleep. When the fairly personable lady beside him woke him up and gave him the note, he smiled with obvious pleasure and put it carefully away in his wallet. When the judge asked him to hand it up to the bench, he said, "It's a purely private matter, my Lord."

2) After a trial before one malignant old tyrant [of a judge] at the Bailey, the user, clearing out the jury box, found a note written to his fellows by the foreman of the jury, who happened to be a well-known actor. The note read simply: "Are we agreed that 1, the judge is an evil bastard, 2, the judge wants this chap convicted, 3, therefore we acquit." And that was the verdict of them all.

-John Mortimer in the Evening Standard

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Posh Spice interview on Talk Radio 5th Oct. '99

Posh Spice interview on Talk Radio
Posted by MHL Ferret on 05 October, 1999 at 17:07:38:
This is a word for word account from the transcript
of a Talk Radio phone in with Victoria Adams (Posh Spice)

Presenter: "and next on the line we have Kirk from Epsom. What's your question for Victoria, Kirk?"

Kirk: "Hi Victoria"

Victoria: "Hi Kirk"

Kirk: "Victoria, I am a big Chelsea and England Fan, and despite all the anti-David publicity I am a real admirer of David's football"

Victoria: "That's nice of you, Kirk"

Kirk: "Well I was wondering Victoria, obviously David has been very successful at Man Utd, and must be very happy there, but we all know that he is a London boy at heart. He really is a great footballer and I would love to see him play for Chelsea one day. The question is Victoria, and I am sure all Chelsea fans would like to know the answer. Do you actually take it up the arse?"

Presenter: Oh really..........! can we please have some sensible callers......

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MI6's best-kept secret: humour

FRANK STAGG, one of Cumming's wartime staff, recalled in a previously unpublished memoir some of the more comical aspects of the intelligence effort against Germany:

Secret inks were our stock-in-trade - and all were anxious to obtain some from a natural source. I shall never forget "C"s delight when the chief sensor, Worthinghton, one day announced that one of his staff had found that semen would not respond to iodine vapour, and told the old man that he had had to remove the discoverer from the office immediately, as his colleagues were making life intolerable by accusations of masturbation.

The old man at once asked Colney Hatch to send female equivalent for testing - and the slogan went round: "Every man his own stylo." We thought we had solved a great problem. Then our man in Copenhagen, Major Holme, evidently stocked it in a bottle, for his letters stank to high heaven, and we had to tell him that a fresh operation was necessary for each letter.

We had close contacts with The War Trade Intelligence Dept, which had its offices at the lake in St James's Park. It was puzzled at the amount of honey passing into Sweden and our man, Savage, tapped some of the casks on the quays at Gothenburg and sent specimens home. More than 80 per cent of it was pure rubber.

Then we asked the French to keep a watch on Swiss imports, and when the French liaison officer told "C" that they had kept a careful watch on imports of French letters to Switzerland, and had worked out that 3 months' import would supply every adult male in that country with 8 per diem for a whole year, the old man laughed till the tears rolled down. That was a great joke of his for a long time.

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Disorder In The Court

From a little book called "Disorder in the Court"...things people actually said in court...word for word...

Q:  What is your date of birth?
A:  July fifteenth.
Q:  What year?
A:  Every year.

Q:  What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A:  Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

Q:  This myasthenia gravis -- does it affect your memory at all?
A:  Yes.
Q:  And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A:  I forget.
Q:  You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've
    forgotten?

Q:  How old is your son -- the one living with you.
A:  Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q:  How long has he lived with you?
A:  Forty-five years.

Q:  And where was the location of the accident?
A:  Approximately milepost 499.
Q:  And where is milepost 499?
A:  Probably between milepost 498 and 500.

Q:  Sir, what is your IQ?
A:  Well, I can see pretty well, I think.

Q:  Did you blow your horn or anything?
A:  After the accident?
Q:  Before the accident.
A:  Sure, I played for ten years.  I even went to school for it.

Q:  Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue
    lights flashing?
A:  Yes.
Q:  Did the defendant say anything when she got out of her car?
A:  Yes, sir.
Q:  What did she say?
A:  What disco am I at?

Q:  Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep,
    he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

Q:  The youngest son, the twenty-year old, how old is he?

Q:  Were you present when your picture was taken?

Q:  Was it you or your younger brother who was killed in the war?

Q:  Did he kill you ?

Q:  How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?

Q:  You were there until the time you left, is that true?

Q:  How many times have you committed suicide?

Q:  So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A:  Yes.
Q:  And what were you doing at that time?

Q:  She had three children, right?
A:  Yes.
Q:  How many were boys?
A:  None.
Q:  Were there any girls?

Q:  You say the stairs went down to the basement?
A:  Yes.
Q:  And these stairs, did they go up also?

Q:  How was your first marriage terminated?
A:  By death.
Q:  And by whose death was it terminated?

Q:  Can you describe the individual?
A:  He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q:  Was this a male or a female?

Q:  Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition
    notice which sent to your attorney?
A:  No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

Q:  Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A:  All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

Q:  All your responses must be oral, OK?  What school did you go to?
A:  Oral.

Q:  Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A:  The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q:  And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A:  No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.

Q:  Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

Q:  Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A:  No.
Q:  Did you check for blood pressure?
A:  No.
Q:  Did you check for breathing?
A:  No.
Q:  So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
    began the autopsy?
A:  No.
Q:  How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A:  Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q:  But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
A:  It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law
    somewhere.

Here are some classic Court transcripts...all recorded by the keepers of the word in various parts of the world...

LAWYER:  What did the tissue samples taken from the victim's vagina show?
WITNESS: There were traces of semen.
LAWYER:  Male semen?
WITNESS: That's the only kind I know of.

LAWYER:  So, after the anaesthetic, when you came out of it, what
         did you observe with respect to your scalp?
WITNESS: I didn't see my scalp the whole time I was in the hospital.
LAWYER:  It was covered?
WITNESS: Yes.  Bandaged.
LAWYER:  Then, later on, what did you see?
WITNESS: I had a skin graft.  My whole buttocks and leg were
         removed and put on top of my head.

CLERK:   Please repeat after me: "I swear by Almighty God..."
WITNESS: "I swear by Almighty God."
CLERK:   "That the evidence that I give..."
WITNESS: That's right.
CLERK:   Repeat it.
WITNESS: "Repeat it".
CLERK:   No!  Repeat what I said.
WITNESS: What you said when?
CLERK:   "That the evidence that I give..."
WITNESS: "That the evidence that I give."
CLERK:   "Shall be the truth and..."
WITNESS: It will, and nothing but the truth!
CLERK:   Please, just repeat after me: "Shall be the truth  and..."
WITNESS: I'm not a scholar, you know.
CLERK:   We can appreciate that.  Just repeat after me: "Shall be
         the truth and..."

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US Navy radio conversation

This is the transcript of an ACTUAL radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995.

Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

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