Upon deploying to Iraq in 2005/06,
members of the Welsh Guards may have been wondering why an awful lot of the children in Basra were shouting "hello sheepshagger!" at them during patrols.

This may have had something to do with Guardsmen from the Scots Guards, who immediately preceded the Taffs on TELIC, and who spent the last week or two of their own deployment teaching the phrase to every Basrawi child they came across.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 17 Jan 2012, 12:49, 8 replies)

Upon deploying to Iraq in 2005/06,
members of the Welsh Guards may have been wondering why an awful lot of the children in Basra were shouting "hello sheepshagger!" at them during patrols.

This may have had something to do with the RHF, who preceded the Taffs on TELIC, and who spent the last week or two of their own deployment teaching the phrase to every Basrawi child they came across.
(square go, Tue 17 Jan 2012, 12:35, 3 replies)

Sitting with my sister, her husband, and their friends around the table.
All of us very, very stoned on massive drugs, an agreeable silence fell upon us, and the noise of Saturday evening television from the next room pervaded.

"What IS that cacophany?!" asked her husband, mellow-wise and thoughtful.

"No thanks" I replied, "I'd prefer tea."

The silence became stilted and confused.

"We haven't even GOT any coffee." said sis.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 17 Jan 2012, 12:16, 5 replies)

Just last night watching the golden globes on sky plus with the cohabitor.
We were fast forwarding to parts were Ricky Garvais was saying something funny (so we got through it in about 15 minutes) when she stopped at Sidney Poitier giving a speech about Morgan Freeman. She had never heard of or see Poitier, so I managed to convince her that he was Morgan Freeman's life partner. At first she was skeptical, but as Freeman told Poitier than he would always think of the award as the Sidney Poitier Award and not Cecil B. DeMille Award and that tear rolled down his face, she said " Aww I bet they've been through so much together."
As I started to laugh uncontrollably she was straight on wikipedia.
(GunProof Grandad Killed your favourite uncle on, Tue 17 Jan 2012, 10:22, 4 replies)

I'm probably a bit too horrible to my Nan
But it's all smiles at the end of the day. On her sixtieth birthday, when I was about thirteen, we were all having a nice family game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Which was entertaining for all of ooh... five minutes? Something had to give.

A quick explanatory aside- said donkey had been stuck to the door to the cupboard under the stairs, and had a very quiet door handle.

So whilst my poor Gran is blindfolded and being span around to disorient her good and proper, I crept forward, and opened the door, and in she walked. And then I closed the door again.

How three generations of a family kept from giggling I will never know. I'm pretty damn sure that my Nan is the only person to ever try playing pin the tail on the washing machine though.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Mon 16 Jan 2012, 23:11, 8 replies)

Vexed by Text
(N.B. The following story employs the annoying use of the term 'Fook' to denote the word 'Fuck' when spoken in a Mancunian accent, as popularised by the NME in the 1990s when quoting a Gallagher brother)

I used to work for a brilliant manager, a proud Mancunian with a fiery temper. A man who, at the time, fitted the lazy mid-90s media label 'New Lad' (think Loaded, football, 'birds', Oasis, binge-drinking, uber-manly-bloke on every level). Impressively, he somehow managed to expertly embody all this without being a dreadful cock. He even put up with the likes of me, a poncey Guardian-reading tosspot with crap hair. His temper, though, was legendary. This was a man who, in one of his finest hours, spent a furious two minutes yelling into the phone before slamming down the receiver and then, because the slam didn't fully demonstrate his anger, picked the phone up off the desk and threw it in the bin.

This was back in the early days of text messages, an invention which this manager quickly embraced. He'd receive regular messages from his mates, all of whom seemed to be in the same new-lad-bloke-sorted-sound-geezer demographic as him. Off-colour jokes, football talk, news of drunken weekends, assertions of rugged heterosexuality, every text back and forth oozed testosterone.

One morning, BEEP BEEP BEEP! BEE-BEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP! he received a text. A text which perplexed.

"What's this?" we heard him call from his office.
"What's what?" we enquired.
"I've just had a text from me mate Daz, and at the end he's put 'L.O.L'. What's L.O.L?"

One brave colleague replied "I think it stands for 'Lots of love'"

A few awkward seconds passed.

"WHAT THE FOOK IS HE SAYING LOTS OF LOVE FOR?!?!? WHO DOES HE FOOKIN' THINK HE IS?!!? LOTS OF FOOKIN' LOVE?!? RIGHT, THAT'S IT, I'M FOOKIN' PHONING THE FOOKIN' TWAT!!! CHEEKY FOOKIN-"

*sound of office door slamming*

*sound of muffled fook-based shouting*

Turns out it didn't stand for 'Lots of Love'.
(costas, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 23:03, 27 replies)

I regularly have two conversations at once
with people who don't understand mouse-over text.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 21:34, 12 replies)

you stupid boy
Where i work we like to fuck around with the new glass collectors. Cue much hillarity when i says to one of them one night to find a skirting board ladder for the boss and coming back from the cellar with a step ladder to take past a full bar of confused bar staff.
(Claude Speed was a Roman called Claudius Speedicus, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 21:24, 7 replies)

It's no good you looking.
I'm really not doing anything here.
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 21:21, 4 replies)

my daughter spent most of
Sunday telling fibs and lies and to stop her from carrying on with them.
i told her that every time she tells a lie a kitten dies the look of anguish pain and horror on her face was worth the almighty dig in the ribs from mrs bunnykiller
( fluffybunnykiller Is feasting on the clitoris of life, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 20:32, 3 replies)

We operate a very good bonus system here.
Not millions like the bankers but still a sizable chunk of money, like 15% or more of annual salary, so not something you'd laugh off if someone threatened to take it away.
One guy was on a serious disciplinary offense, suspended and having his bonus stripped, the others, well, trying to close ranks deny everything.
Me: "Ok, so listen everyone, you already know X has a warning and has lost his bonus right?"
Agreement.
"Does anyone have anything to add, or any comments?"
None.
"Right, well the inquiry continues and anyone who knew something but didn't tell us now has the opportunity to keep their bonus and avoid a written warning or worse, but I expect that's really the matter closed as everyone's already told us that they didn't know anything....right?"

Right.


By the end of the day, everyone had slipped in for a quiet word about what they knew.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 19:03, 7 replies)

Time zone difference
Being a Brit in California, I get asked lots of dumbass questions (do you have milk in England?)...a few weeks ago, I was at the bar with my boyfriend and the lovely but a bit gullible Marissa was working. She asked us what the time was, my clock said 6.41, boyfs said 6.40....so as a joke, the boyfriend said it must be a time difference thing.
Hook, line and fucking sinker....Marissa totally fell for it....I had her believing that England was exactly one minute ahead of California (cos of the international date line).
Some random English guy went into the bar 2 days later, so Marissa struck up a conversation and proceeded to tell him about the time difference.....naturally, he was 'eh, it's 8 hours love'. I got a text message from Marissa about it (while English guy was still there), and so I told her it's because I'm from Hull......bless the guy...he was like 'Oh, ok, I'm from Portsmouth, that makes the difference'. I saw Marissa the next day and she told me all about their conversation and the 'British date line' that seperates north & south, and how when it's daytime in the north it's night in the south.

She nearly fucking killed me on New Years Eve when I went in at 4pm to celebrate British new year.....

Thanks random English bloke for 'validating' my story...
(nolongernuts, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 18:32, 11 replies)

I made it look like I'd been knocked off, but actually I'd faked my own suicide in order to escape the rat race and go and enjoy my savings.
Signed,

Dr. D. Kelly.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 18:21, 5 replies)

Noise
A few years ago I lived next door to an old lady, she was nice but the inevitable happened and she popped her clogs.
So her grandson decided to move into the house. He liked Reggae music, loud Reggae music and would sit outside at the back of his garden with the house windows wide open listening to “Best reggae Hits 93” on repeat and at full volume, day after day after day. The same fucking album. After several attempts to get the twat to turn UB40 and friends down only for the volume to be insanely loud again the next day. To save my sanity I hatched a plan.
If you have ever had an older car you may have experience the sound of the windscreen wipers coming out of the stereo, this is because the wiper motor gives an interference signal that is usually blocked by a suppressor.
I had an old bench grinder, one with a massive 2000w motor. I clipped off the suppressor from the motor with some wire snips and rebuilt the grinder .
The next day the usual happened at about 2pm when he awoke and decided to put on Reggae hits, The Volume creeps up, I plug in the grider the other side of the wall to his stereo.
“Red, red wine CHSHK Go to my head CHSSScK Make me forget that KCHSSScK Still need her so KCHSSScK Red, red wine KCHSSScK it's up to you KCHSSScK.”
The volume goes down to a level that I can live with, off goes the grinder, up goes his volume on goes my grinder.
The best thing is that he thought that the Stereo had developed a fault and took it in for repairs, that took a couple of weeks, and he took it in three times.
(Orkstomper, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 16:30, 6 replies)

I'm on a f*****g TRAIN
It was the early years of truly portable mobile telephones, but noise-cancelling microphones weren't included. So people really *did* have to shout, "I'm On A Train" to be heard and understood.

On the long rail journey to Gobowen from London, the man sitting only one row from me, but facing away, was constantly using his mobile phone, loudly braying to anyone he could call about his City deals, bonuses and the girls he was going to seduce as a result of increasing his cut on his clients' investments. Perhaps he was heading to Shropshire to steal some country land from the locals in order to build a golf course?

I, too, had my shiny new Orange phone with me, on the cheapest plan, £15 a month -- the year was 1994. And the idiot in the next row read out his telephone number, clearly and loudly, to someone he'd called.

Even in those early days, dialling 141 hid the number you were calling from. And Orange did not charge for any calls lasting less than two seconds. Oh! How I enjoyed the rest of the journey!
(Sky Channel 760, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 15:51, Reply)

Hula what now?...

Now, before I continue, I might like to add that I am currently a bit squiffy. Following his successful interview, Captain Placid took me roughly from behind for a liquid lunch that consisted of a bottle or 2 of fortified wine. 'Twas Lully. Oh yeah.

But I've since been dropped off back at work...and have been sat here waiting for the minutes / hours to tick by...I've got no other meetings today...no deadlines...no nowt. Result!

However, I've had an understandable attack of the munchies. A harmless, 'couldn't hurt', case of booze-related hunger pangs...

The cafeteria is shut for the afternoon...therefore I have no other option but to head for the snack machine...

I subsequently fire a metric fuckload of change into said machine and buy a variety of snacks, and...some of those BBQ beef flavour hula-hoops that I pray will sustain me for the next couple of hours...

I then leg it back to my office, open the packet, and what do I find???

They're like fucking TUBES. MASSIVE BASTARD TUBES!! THEY'RE NOT LIKE HULA HOOPS AT ALL! WHO OR WHAT COULD HAVE CAUSED THIS???

I wish I was clever enough to take a photo and upload it, cos these mofos are impressive. I don't know what went on in the Hula-hoop factory when these bastards were made, but...Why me?...Of all the 'ridiculous odds' things to happen to people, why couldn't I just win the lottery? instead of being the recipient of massively weird Hula Hoops? hang on a minute...

What if one of YOU did it?...eh?...you total bastards...feeding my paranoia by singling me out to be the sole recipient of massive fuck-off tube-tastic efforts instead of standard hula-hoops - just to put me on edge.

Whoever did this was an evil genius I reckon. They taste lovely though.

Just my luck to have freaky hula hoops when I'm trying desperately hard to look sober! I can't help myself! I have had to grab everyone in the nearby vicinity and bellow: "LOOK AT THESE FUCKERS!!" before waving a tube-like hula-hoop in the face of any unsuspecting passer-by.


I haven't been here long. The outlook isn't good, is it? They're lucky to have me...aren't they?...
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Mon 16 Jan 2012, 15:28, 22 replies)

Once I called a mate everyday for two weeks
Using the phone number hiding prefix. Letting it ring once then hanging up.
(splungedude dreams of chocolate bunnies, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 15:22, 2 replies)

So I cut off his wife's head and delivered it to him in a box.

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 14:25, 14 replies)

Carnivorous Sheep
I used to work in an office with nice landscaped grounds with ponds and small, rolling hillocks. The abundance of rabbits and the strange vent pipes (offices were built on an old landfill site) made it looks like we worked in teletubby land.

One day we noticed some sheep fenced in on the lush green grass. While we pondered on why they were here I contributed in perfect deadpan, "They're probably here to control the rabbits. Sheep eat rabbits." Queue a horrified visage and the stammered question, "They don't!?" "No, they don't." "What a relief! I didn't know what I was going to tell my girls!"

Who didn't cry the first time they heard that sheep ate rabbits?
( Jimvin dropped plates on your arse at, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 14:19, 1 reply)

Your country needs you
At some point in the mid 90s me and a friend of mine called Wayne were both 17. We were also both in college doing not much other than getting pissed as often as possible. Wayne was quite a large chap as was his Sister and his Brother; they looked like they could benifit from a more active lifestyle...

About this time I quite often bought classy magazines such as Loaded, Maxim, and the new at the time Nuts. In these there would often be adverts for the Navy, Army, Airforce, Royal Marines, etc. You could fill in your details on a cut out coupon and send it via Freepost to receive more information. For a spell of over a year I filled these in with Wayne, his Sister and his Brothers details, rotating the forces as much as I could remember. He mentioned it to me one day saying that his Mum was really pissed off and upset that the armed forces were constantly trying to recruit her children especially as his little Brother was only 10 at the time!
This made me chuckle to myself like a lightweight Bond villain, but I never revealed my part in it.
(Bad_Dogg, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 14:11, 3 replies)

The n-gage story a few posts down reminded me of this...
A few years ago when I worked in Coventry, one of my colleagues got a new laptop. This is before they were as common as they are now, and he made a big deal of how small, light, battery life-mungous & more fully featured than any other laptop his was.

One day later that week, a fax arrived - it was from our laptop-wielding hero, proclaiming "Woo, I'm sending this from my laptop, check me out!"

I took the fax, reduced it several times on our photocopier & then scanned it back through the fax so it was on heat sensitive paper & left it on his desk, the page he'd sent now a barely legible postage stamp size.

When he came into the office later that day I greeted him with "I think your fax settings are wrong mate, that doesn't look right to me".

Cue bemused headscratching & an afternoon of looking through the settings, trying to find where the "fax output size" was stored :D
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 13:53, 1 reply)

National Lottery "win"!
I'm sure we're not alone in having done this but here goes:

About 15 years ago, I shared a house with a couple of friends: Darren and Lorraine. We were all in our mid-twenties.

Lorraine was a really sweet girl but she could be a bit gullible, so Darren and myself hatched a plan...

It was early Saturday evening and we were having a few drinks at home, before going to the pub. We'd always watch the National Lottery draw and check our numbers (we had a house syndicate), to decide if we were going out to celebrate a win. Or not. Most weeks it was the latter.

I had our lottery slip and just before the lottery numbers were drawn, Darren and I needed refills. So we gave the lottery ticket to Lorraine and exited to the kitchen for more beer. Whilst there, we listened to the sounds coming from the living room:

Lottery announcer: "And tonight's first ball: twenty six!"
Lorraine: "ooh!"
Announcer: "...and it's thirty nine!"
Lorraine: "Thirty... nine!"
Announcer: "...that's number six!"
Lorraine: "WE WON A TENNER!"
Announcer: "...forty two!"
Lorraine: "Woo!"
Announcer: "...and the fifth ball...thirty!"
Lorraine: "Ooh, fuckin' 'ell, we've got five numbers!"
Announcer: "...good luck...ball number six is...seven!"
Lorraine: "Fucking...Ffffffuck...shit...fucking hell! We've won the fucking lottery!"

Darren and I were beside ourselves in the kitchen. We left it a couple of minutes before returning to the living room and taking the VHS tape out of the VCR with the previous week's lottery draw recorded on it.
( <>Dog www.stevelaker.blog, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 13:26, 1 reply)

When I was 10
I rang up a friend of mine on his landline from a withheld number and using a posh voice pretended to from a big-name newspaper informing him that he had won ten thousand pounds.

I’ll never forget how excited he sounded, the words “Mum! Mum! We’ve won, we’ve won!” still ring out in my ears today. I put the phone down very quickly after that and have felt guilty about it ever since.
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 12:40, Reply)

Mindtricks
My mother once played a trick on me when I was little, that left me completely horrified. For reasons I don't remember we had a chicken. Just one chicken, which I think she'd taken in as some sort of chicken refugee. Anyhow one day I woke up and was told solemnly that this chicken had died in the night. I wasn't that upset and trotted off to school.

That night however there was chicken for dinner. My mother, completely straightfaced leaned over and told me that the chicken I was eating was our chicken. I looked at her horrified and completely unbelieving. She pointed at a wriggly tendon like bit and told me that it was a worm.

The bastard hadn't cooked the chicken of course, it had been buried, and it was the source of substantial laughter on my parents part that I had believed them.
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 12:37, Reply)

Elmo
Is it really really unfair that when my 3 year old picks up the phone (and it's invariably cold-callers etc...) once they've gone, I start doing an Elmo impression from the other phone, and i've got her convinced that sometimes Elmo calls her up to sing the alphabet with her?
(Universon, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 12:22, 7 replies)

Silly wannabe hollyoakers....
On a 2 carriage train from Peterborough to Leicester 4 girls with the UK's version of tracksuit bottom abercrombie and fitch for posh chavs got on the train... one girl came through and asked if she could come into our carriage. I replied that it was "the left handed carriage, for left handed people only" she promptly left to our bemusement, but we did here her explain to her friends "no, we can't go in that carriage because we're not left handed, it's the left handed carriage, only for p...." and she just trailed off.... I like to think her first name was Dawn, second Ofrealisation
(Universon, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 12:20, 1 reply)

Americans can be slightly gullible
I once explained to a San Diegan/Diegian... that in the UK they have outlawed unlicensed fighting, and that up until recently there used to be underground fighting between children. I explained how animal fighting was also outlawed and had been for many years. HOWEVER I explained how there was a loophole, and nobody had written a law that prevented people from pitting their children (literally pitting them) against dogs in a fight....... and so often kids and cannines were to fight in pits out the back of pubs, predominantly in a land called Essex, and preferentially Ginger children, and the child was given just one stone/rock, and it had to bash the dogs skull in, and the dog had to choke the kid out mouth round throat for 2 full minutes for a victor to be declares...

"oh that's terrible"..........

Never understood why the person believed me
(Universon, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 12:18, Reply)

Massive Drugs
One winters night many years ago at Duke of Edinburgh award scheme (ok, I didn't actually do any of that stuff, but we did play no rules basketball for hours whilst there) I convinced a friend to try some drugs. Now, I didn't do drugs myself (alcohol not counted) but he regularly smoked weed, and so when I offered him some drugs he was bang up for it. I lead him out of the youth club, along the road, and into the secluded privacy of the local church graveyard.

I explained to him that the drug was cocaine, very very strong cocaine, because it was directly imported and not cut, but that they'd used the latest smuggling tricks to get it through customs undetected, and that they'd combined the cocaine with the 'mint' chemical out of toothpaste to confuse the sniffer dogs at the airports. I further explained how through the processes of chemical bonding and science that needed no explanation, the chemical component that produced the mint swell was chemically bonded to the pigmentation/colour component and so the resultant cocaine was now light green.

I proceeded to tell him that it was too strong to snort, and that he should take it orally, at which point I produced a coin bag' containing copious amounts of the drugs, holding it aloft in the graveyard by the light of the full moon, and telling him that i'd have to pour it for him as too much would result in a certain overdose. He agreed and held his mouth open, head back - at which point I poured about 3 tablespoons down his throat making him choke, then ran around going "oh my god, on no, oh god, help, oh no" while he went white as white can be and pretty much crumpled to the floor in fear.

OK, so having explained to him that it was in fact ground up clorets, he'd be fine, why did he think i'd be doing drugs, and why on earth would he let someone do that? It was worth the massively dead arm I got.
(Universon, Mon 16 Jan 2012, 12:15, 1 reply)