Trojan Horse
Probably not the most stupid thing ever but made me laugh - my girlfriend and her family were watching Troy on DVD over Christmas.

She nodded off for 10 minutes and awoke confused as to what was going on. In an effort to get up to speed again with the film she asked which one is Troy? Brad Pitt?
(Tiger_Boy, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 11:18, Reply)

These were told to me by a friend...
...who had just spent a few months in America.

Yank: So, where are you from?
Him: England.
Yank: Really? Wow! We have relatives in France!

???

Also, he was asked on many occasions (without a hint of irony) if all English people had tea + crumpets at 4 every day.

Have you ever seen an episode of Only Fools and Horses called Miami Twice? In it, the Trotters go to America and keep getting mistaken for Australians. That kept happening to my friend, and he isn't even a cockney!

Edit: He's going again this year and has promised to write down all the stoopid Americanisms for me!
(Mr Slippyfist, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 11:16, Reply)

Them crazy Americans again...
Blarney Castle, Ireland.
The doors are signed showing how they were used, e.g. Great Hall, Kitchen etc..
Fat yank in tartan golf gear grabs his fat wife and excitedly points to a door...
"Look honey, this was Earl's room!" he shouts.
Yes, cos Earl lived there didn't he?
(Sleary, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 11:14, Reply)

When I worked at St. Thomas' Hospital in London
my mate's Mum came into our lab which overlooked the River Thames.
"That's a lovely building over there," quoth she, "what is it?"
"Nothing important," says my mate, "only the Houses of fucking Parliament."

Edit - Just remembered. I very often used to get asked on Westminster Bridge by visiting persons from Dumbfuckistan where Big Ben was? I'd reply in the Clock Tower - it's the bell, of course. I also got asked a lot to take pictures of Japanese tourists with the tower in the background. The thought of them getting their holiday snaps back from the Tokyo Boots with their little heads cut off still amuses me.... Serves 'em right for the Burma Railway....
(Doctor Evil, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 11:11, Reply)

Who wants to be a millionaire?
£200 question : What does the G in 'GMT' stand for?

Contestant takes an amusing 10 or so seconds to confirm the correct answer and my mates and I have a wry snigger whereupon one of mate's girlfriend pipes up "Why are you laughing, that's a really hard question, I wouldn't have known..."

2:2 in Psychology? Never mind that she'd got a degree - just having been on the planet for 24 years is bad enough.
(Frustrated IT Support Person - now with added network support., Fri 7 Jan 2005, 11:08, Reply)

Yanks
I was walking past St Pauls Cathedral when I heard this conversation between two middle aged American women:

"It's kind of small, the dome I mean. We have bigger domes back in the States".
"Yeah I know Ethel, but this dome is reeal old".
"So our domes are bigger AND newer! Nowhere beats Texas".

The truth was undeniable.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:57, Reply)

Innocence
A friend and I were sitting outside the pub when in the distance we spotted a rainbow. A girl we know came out to sit with us and remarked on how her cousin had a "rainbow start off the bonnet of her car once"

She didn't mention a pot of gold though.
( SauronWibble I'll hold it, you lick it..., Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:52, Reply)

Cleanliness
I live in Italy and so have to put up with a lot of anti-English jokes etc. The worst was when my boss's son was going to England on a school trip and the organisers told all the parents that their children shouldn't expect to be allowed to wash for the entire week's stay as the English are notoriously dirty and don't always have showers available?!
Where did that come from?
(Hazy, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:45, Reply)

not quite overheard but idiotic enough! apologies for width, girth, length and size...etc
dedbeat is a top mini-festival, run by some mates of a mate - they take over a pontins holiday camp - legally of course - and set up several stages and a bar over a weekend in summer. really good fun, you get a chalet place with your ticket, plus access to all the typical pontins stuff (swimming pool, go carts n shit) plus 16 hours a day of hip hop, techno, electro, rave, breakbeats, drum n bass and ambient. genius.

however some asshole has been claiming he runs the festival, with a whole load of idiotic ideas about how festivals should be run (i'm sure you know the type...!) managed to get onto the bbc "dragons lair" program, so these mates of a mate to send out this email:
this was the disclaimer sent out:
"It should be flattering when some guy likes to get delusional about being a part of the Dedbeat, however not when it's the likes of that fella recently seen on the BBC 2 reality show. He has never, nor ever will have any legitimate operation in Dedbeat actions. You may rest easy. It made us laugh for a moment that someone would actually do this, then we realised that for those not directly familiar with us, the idea that this fool was the ‘organiser’ would indeed be rather pony. Because of this we felt it necessary to mail out this disclaimer. The guy has apparently been fraudulently using our name so that he can get his questionable festival ideas off the ground. Hilarious on one hand that he was such a failure at it, horrific on the other that he managed to get on an entrepreneurial TV game show!
(Mr Smithe, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:43, Reply)

Calling the apostrophe police...
An ex of mine claimed that it's was the incorrect spelling of its.

Not the greatest piece of ignorance in the world, I'd agree.

Apart from the fact she was an English teacher and had been marking it as wrong.
(Chuffdog, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:39, Reply)

What Turtles???
Me and my brother where discussing a place in Hampshire that does martial arts displays and also has a sideline in falconry lessons..
My sister on hearing this posed the question..

"so falconry and Ninja's aren't the same thing?"
"so you're not talking about turtles.."
Bless..
(maxbeaver, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:39, Reply)

It's interesting how many of these are Americans.
Here's another one.

American (standing outside Durham Cathedral): "Excuse me, where is Dur-Ham Cathedral?"
Me : "It's right there, behind you."
American: "Oh! You mean behind that big church?"
(rpophessagr, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:35, Reply)

to my utmost shame
I moved to Edinburgh from Birmingham nearly twenty years ago.

My Mum and Dad came to visit and meet my new girlfriend, (now ex). We went out to dinner, during which my Mum calmly asked my Aberdonian Girlfriend,

"Do they turn the clocks back in Scotland?"

I think one of the reasons she is an ex is that she would never let me forget this and told the world.

I should point out I am not ashamed of moving to Scotland, only of my mother. Sorry Mum.
(pyrogenius, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:35, Reply)

One of our OAP customers brought his PC in with email problems
It turned out to be a 75MB email stuck in the outbox which was being trying to be sent over dial-up.

When I explained to him that this was a tad excessive to be sending over email he replied:

"But it's only going up the road"

....I still have the bitemarks on my lip
( Deadpool, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:30, Reply)

I could post another American one
The "so you must know the spice girls?" or "I guess in must be winter for you guys right now?" (said in June) ... but that's at least partially the fault of the country itself not just the occupants so .... my favourite

Me, to one of my (non-American) final year undergrad students:

"this equipment only logs on paper, not a PC, and you'll need to measure the area under the curve, so rather than counting squares I suggest you cut out the shape of the curve and weigh the paper"

Her:

"so will i need any special biological equpiment to do this?"

Arrrrrggggghhhhh. Scissors? special biological equipment?

She got a fucking 2:2 as well.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:30, Reply)

Arr americians
Told to me by a friend who used to live in Camebridge walking round the uni there following but not part of a tour she over heard an americain sto the tour guy and ask him this imortal line. "so is this pre-war" snobby tour man replies in best queens english
"madam this is pre-Americia!"
ahh you yanks if it didnt happen in the last 200 years then your view of it seems to be as close to the truth as Mr Gibsons!
(Druss, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:27, Reply)

More Americans and their ballistic approach to Geography
yank: So where are you from?

me: England

yank: What - the actual city of England?

me: England is a country

yank: Whatever.... so how far is England from London?

me: London is in England

yank: Right, right...but it's pretty near to the UK, right?

me: (shakes head and walks away)
( Young Master Ploppy, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:17, Reply)

Warwick Castle
Following a very lardy family of Americanians around the ramparts of said castle when the chubby kid asks dad how long the queue is to the ride. Dad patiently explains that it's not a ride, it's just a castle. About a minute later the kid asks again and despite the explanation, keeps asking every two cranberrying minutes about the ride.

Aventually, the dad stops and trys to distract chubba-lub by showing him the moat and explaining that this was used to protect the castle. The kid asks how a stupid ditch could protect a castle and the father says (I swear I'm not making this up) "Well they filled the moat with gasoline and set fire to it"...

I think I actually cried.
( Linbox has a serious dunk habit, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:09, Reply)

Where do i live?
Not really overheard as this was a conversation with an ex girlfriend while on a plane back to England from Greece. Just as we were approaching good old blighty and the white cliffs of Dovor came into view my girlfriend turned to me and asked the immortal question....

"You know i've always wondered where abouts in England the white cliffs of Dovor are?"

(Sighs)
(One Pig. Slightly Used., Fri 7 Jan 2005, 10:08, Reply)

When the Amiga A500 was da bomb
It had an integral disk drive and a'hing. We were round my best mate’s house, in the sitting room, when we kept getting loading errors, saying something like "please remove all peripherals and try again". Exasperated by the fact that there was no external equipment plugged into the damn thing, my pal demanded, "What peripheral!”

To which his mother, who was in attendance in the sitting room, immediately replied "Oooh they're those little pastries with the cream on the inside and the chocolate on top; a bit like an éclair".
(Indolent Sloth, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:57, Reply)

At a car boot sale:
A bloke with some old camera equipment was trying to blag someone into buying with this classic line: "There's nothing wrong with it, it's just broken." What took the piss is that the buyer fell for it and coughed up the money.
( Nimble Colin camera-wrangling, globe-trotting whisky enthusiast, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:53, Reply)

This woman I work with
Is a complete mong head sometimes she has come out with some priceless things! Just the other day she was telling us of this amazing discovery she had made: apparently she had been driving around for sometime with no water in her windscreen washers, her husband got in the car to drive and quickly encounterd the problem. When he asked her why there was no water she replied "well it hasn't rained in a while". When asked to explain further by her puzzled husband she uttered the gem "I thought rain filled the engine back up through the slits in the top of the bonnet".

This is the same woman who asked me what the difference was between an air guitar and an electric guitar!!!! apparently she was under the impression that guitars without the long cable to the amp were powered by the air!!! What a friggin dumbass!
(Manatee Fondler, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:52, Reply)

jings, crivvens, help ma boab.
yank : Oh gee! you're from Scotchland..
me : yes
yank : so, like, do you ever wear a pair of kilts?
(Chillumm, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:50, Reply)

On a trip to Ireland
We ran into a coachload of American tourists at Blarney Castle.

"I hope you're not going to try kissing the Blarney Stone," we ventured.

It was, it turned out, going to be the highlight of their tour back to the "Old Country".

"They never wash it you know. Cold sores. Herpes. AIDS. The works."

"Oh my GODDDDDDD!" shouted one of the Wilburs.

"I'll sue!" screamed a wrinkled old woman in a sun visor.

We were nearly trampled in the rush to get back on the charabang, and they fled.

After kissing the stone ourselves, we subsequently learned that they DO wash the stone on a regular basis.

This is because local youths think it funny to break into the castle at night and piss on the thing. Lovely.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:44, Reply)

Lost
The pub I work in sometimes is slap bang in the middle of Soho.

Every now and then some dumb-ass american tourist asks: "excuse me, but can you tell me how to get to Soho from here?"

me: "You're in Soho"

Cue blank stare and a very dissapointed "oh"

What were they expecting, Cabaret performers and strippers in the street? jeeeeeeezus
(Lemster the sound of one luma clamping, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:43, Reply)

On belhalf of my dad I shall post some of the things
he heard in his 17 months working for a security firm at the airport.

(bear in mind that my dad had the benefit of an x-ray scanner for this)
Dad: Do you have anything gas, electrical or battery operated in your bag sir?
Passenger: No
Dad: Well, I can see a plug
Passenger: No
Dad: A kettle perhaps?
Passenger: Oh yes
Dad: Anything else?
Passenger: No
Dad: What about the iron I can see then?
Passenger: Oh yes, that too
Dad: So you do have electrical items in your bag then, don't you sir?
Passenger: (and honest to god, he said this with a straight face) But they aren't plugged in

One of my favourite stories is one that was overheard between two of the baggage handlers he knew. One was telling the other how the American Airlines flight from Chicago had landed and the pilot had radioed to maintenance to have a look at some of the radio equipment that wasn't working in the cockpit. The engineer went to check it and found that it was actually working fine but as it turns out, they had flown all the way from America with the thing switched off. Tales like that don't do much to reassure you about long haul air travel.
( Nimble Colin camera-wrangling, globe-trotting whisky enthusiast, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:42, Reply)

Americans eh!
Not all of them, but most.

How long did it take you to drive here from England?
Surrey is a mining town, right?
(To a zookeeper) Why don't the tigers eat hamburgers?
How far is England from the UK?

Her: The IRA are so clever, they smuggle their bombs over borders disguised as babies.
Me: *tumbleweed... red mist...* Well there's this guy Bin Laden...
( Micro Prawnvica, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:38, Reply)

Oooh... Shakespear
Sorry to double post...

I was round my ex-girlfriends house when her brothers girlfriend walked past.

She's studying english A level and was carrying a video of Hamlet under her arm.

I asked her, "Which version of Hamlet is that?"

To which she carefully studied the video box before replying, "... it's the William Shakespear version..."

But she was very very cute....
Out of the mouths of babes eh?
( Beastie is doing science with his arse, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:38, Reply)

Geography...
Whilst waiting in the queue at Heathrow Airport, there was an american and a dutch man behind me.
The american says, "Hey buddy, where're you from? I don't recognise your accent..."
The dutch guy replys, "I'm dutch"
American - "Really? Never heard of it... where in the world is dutch?"
( Beastie is doing science with his arse, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:34, Reply)

My sister's girlfriend
No, my girlfriend's sister - who I actually find extremely beautiful - once said 'I didn't know that the sun and the moon weren't the same thing'.

I gots ta get me a goyle like dat.
( Micro Prawnvica, Fri 7 Jan 2005, 9:34, Reply)