I inadvertently insulted someone's wife
One night last year, I was round at a mate's house. There was a whole bunch of us there, including one bloke, Gary, who is the subject of this little tale.

Anyway, the topic of conversation got onto a girl whom we all knew well, who was ugly as a bag of spanners, a pain in the arse and to crown it all, hugely fat. We're not talking plump, chubby, overweight or cuddly here. I mean gargantuan.

Anyway, I started going on at some length about her excessive rotundness and then made the crack that if her legs were made of ham, one of them would last you all winter. Much hilarity among the company.

I hadn't noticed, but Gary wasn't laughing. He left shortly afterwards, whereupon another bloke there asked me, "Have you ever met Gary's wife?"

The penny dropped. I had met her. She was of similar proportions, and worse still, a very nice person. I haven't seen either of them since. And it turns out that most of the laughter at the leg of ham joke wasn't because it was funny, but because the rest of them had picked up on this and were pissing themselves listening to me unknowingly digging myself into a deep hole.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 10 Oct 2007, 13:34, Reply)