HP sauce
In t'olden days when I wor a lad, the label on HP sauce bottles had a description of the contents written both in English and French. The French version began with 'Cette sauce de haute quality est un melange de fruits orientaux, d'epices et de vinaigre de malt.' It went on for quite a few sentences more and for some reason I learned the whole passage by heart and became most proficient at reciting it. Quite an achievement... but that's not it. As a student I discovered by chance that laydees just can't say no when a bit of French is whispered in their ears. Consequently for years I have got my end away to the whispered description of brown sauce.
I should be ashamed of myself.
But I'm not.
(mallyjoe, Tue 21 Oct 2014, 16:08, 12 replies)

I had a letter printed in Private Eye the week Linda McCartney died. I quote:
"I note Linda McCartney has requested that instead of flowers, well-wishers donate to charities for animal welfare and cancer research in her memory. Perhaps if her animal welfare friends had stopped firebombing medical research clinics, they might have found a cure for her cancer earlier."
My proudest publication ever.
( da5id <YOUR SIG HERE>, Tue 21 Oct 2014, 23:55, 3 replies)

I won £30 in a nightclub fruit machine.
Really, that's about the long and short of it, but there is some context here if you'll allow me to explain:

(Wavy lines ensue)

Around about the turn of the Millenium, a much younger version of me worked in a nightclub in the town of Swindon, behind the bar. It was a 2nd job for me, because I was always utterly, utterly skint at the time. This worked in a couple ways, because it meant that I was behind the bar most nights, but on the odd night off, or a Sunday, I could go have a few drinks at one of the other fine establishments that Swindon had to offer in the late 90's.

On one such Sunday, I met up at the usual jump-off point for an evening's drinking, but I was in trouble as I only had about 3 pounds to my name, and it was two pounds to the only nightclub that was open on Sunday, and then 60p drinks all evening. I thought I'd be able to blag a few from some mates, but it was looking like a light evening was on the cards.

I spied one of my work buddies at our usual table, minus a drink. A quick conversation established that we were both skint. When the doors opened at 6:30pm, we were ushered into the club, paid the lady at the door, and then grabbed our one and only guaranteed drink for the evening. with our meagre 44p change each, we wandered over to the comfy seating area and propped ourselves over a railing, hoping to catch the eye of a fine-looking damsel or two.

My fellow skintee, Danny leaned over and shouted. "Give us 40p, would'ya?"

To whit I replied: "No."

He pointed at the fruit machine in the corner. "It takes 20p coins, we can get 4 spins on that if you give me your change."

I looked at my options. 44p wasn't going to get me either a taxi, or a kebab. Maybe, just maybe we'd get a couple quid from the machine and take the edge of the couple mile walk home. I dug deep into my pocket and handed Danny my last 20 pence coins.

We sauntered over to the machine and deposited the coins, starting the sequnce of lights that seemed even brighter in the otherwise low-lit room. I leaned against the side of the machine, expecting failure and secretly hoping for success. 1st spin, nothing, same for the 2nd.

On the third spin, 2 jackpot signs appeared on the line and Danny was gifted a nudge by the machine. It was exactly what was needed. A small light explosion went off on the front of the machine and it started to spit out pound coins. My WKD Irn-Bru went everywhere as I jumped for joy. But it didn't end there. The replay button was flashing on yes/no, and danny called it beautifully. Back to back jackpots on a nightclub fruit machine. 30 quid all in. I looked at the pile of coins, and my mind thought of greasy foodstuffs and a comfortable ride back to my house. But I was 18, so that didn't happen.

We took it straight to the bar and spent it all on more WKD Irn-Bru. I woke up in a bush at 3am with my bare feet poking out the top, my shoes having been nicked by a passer by and thrown on a nearby roof. Longest walk home, ever.

TL;DR: See the title
(Ryushin, Tue 21 Oct 2014, 23:32, 7 replies)

Wanderer's story reminded me...
I listen to the Kermode & Mayo film review show on BBC 5 Live (or whatever it's called this week). Those of you who listen regularly will know that Mark Kermode is not a fan of the actor Danny Dyer and takes the piss out of him at every opportunity.

Dyer has reacted to this by threatening to beat up Kermode if they ever meet, which has just made him more ridiculous in the critic's eyes and resulted in Kermode pointedly (and repeatedly) noting, when other actors take criticism well, that they have a "sense of humour and a career".

Another recurring thread on the show is the presenters' resemblance to various famous people, so when someone suggested that Mark Kermode looks a bit like Kim Jong-Un, I sent an e-mail - that was read out on air - stating that the Great Leader would not be offended by this as, "He has a sense of humour, and a Korea."

Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Fri 17 Oct 2014, 10:46, 4 replies)

Just recently...
...two strange men have started hanging round my local shopping centre. One's a chubby Australian with a goatee, and the other one's a tall, skinny middle-aged guy in a turd-coloured corduroy jacket. They never speak to each other, even though they seem to be acquainted, and they both have a sad, haunted look in their eyes, like they're struggling with some great loss. They also seem to have a lot of spare time on their hands.

I'm sure they're harmless even though most people tend to avoid them, but if anyone knows who's responsible for them, please can you arrange to have them collected? They're really depressing everyone.

Thanks.
(Joy Division Oven Gloves Death to false metal, Sun 19 Oct 2014, 21:37, 6 replies)

arcade game in spain
called thunder and lightning. clocked it and got my name on the top of the scoreboard.
went back about 10 years later, my name was still on top of that scoreboard. shouldn't have been as pleased as i was.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sat 18 Oct 2014, 17:51, 8 replies)

Many years ago when I was a lot slimmer
I had to go and meet a friend at Heathrow who was flying over to visit me. I grabbed a pair of jeans and put them on. They felt a bit tight but fitted. I walked into the tv room to get my coat and my girlfriend asked me why I was wearing her jeans. I couldn't be bothered to change so headed off to the airport while she shouted 'Tranny alert' as I left.

I met my friend and we had some pints in the bar at the airport. At the time they were selling scrumpy on draught. It was the flat cloudy cider. We had 3 pints.

We walked down to the Heathrow tube and I got as far as the bottom of the escalator when I released a fart. Unfortunately the fart had much more substance than expected.

My silly achievement is that I managed to shit in my girlfriends jeans.
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Fri 17 Oct 2014, 11:08, 6 replies)

We'd eat mushrooms and then go out and try to catch cats
We got 4 in the house at the same time once.
( rofl harris, Fri 17 Oct 2014, 10:49, 4 replies)

I once corrected the Oxford English Dictionary
I spotted something in one of the definitions that was wrong. They'd cited a poem as a reference and had the title and date of the poem wrong. So I wrote them an email and I got a reply back thanking me for pointing out the mistake and promising to correct it in the next edition, which they did.

Quite boring, but it does mean when someone tells me something's right because the dictionary says so I can just go "I fucking CORRECT the dictionary!".

Lots of people at work don't like me much.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 17 Oct 2014, 10:16, 7 replies)

Long Range flatulance
After uni my first job was in a factory and after a pleasent evening at the local brewery i was trying and failing at letting out a couple of silent farts (i previously had great success with what i later discovered to be called crop dusting while passing through the welding shop) while we were all standing around outside waiting for the buzzer to go and the working day to begin. they were so evil that nobody was fooled when i claimed that they were not mine.

so about half an hour later i am standing at one end of the warehouse and a couple of my collegues were down the other end knowing i would get the blame for any arse gas that day i shouted to get thier attention and went for the combined bent knee and elbow motion as i pushed out a particularly big one.

moments later they were shouting at me, pulling their shirts up over their noses and claiming that i must have "pulled mud with that one".

length? around 30 to 40 meters (thankfully i was able to hold the rest in until the walk home)
( Reme Philips laid an epic dump on, Tue 21 Oct 2014, 23:37, 1 reply)

On Radio Scotland there is a Saturday lunchtime football programme called 'Off The Ball'
Their website used to run a weekly caption competition.

One week (probably 10-15 years ago) the picture contained one-time England goalkeeper David Seaman, lying flat on his back, with the ball nestled in the net behind him.

My winning entry was 'Seaman Spoils Clean Sheet' for which I won an 'Off The Ball' t-shirt, which I still have to this day.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Mon 20 Oct 2014, 13:58, 1 reply)

The other day I thought, "I wonder how I'd do if I went blind?"
I went to the kitchen, toasted a crumpet, spread peanut butter on it, went back to the living room, put on the radio, and sat on the couch and ate my crumpet, all with my eyes closed.
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Sun 19 Oct 2014, 2:37, 8 replies)

sausage
Back in the early 80s, my next door neighbour & I enjoyed filling the time between spliffs by sending off for every freepost offer in the back of magazines and having a laugh at the stream of inappropriately addressed junk mail that dropped through our doors each day. We even had a personal visit from a finance company after we'd expressed an interest in borrowing some money (got a free Parker pen with that one).

"Is there a Mrs Pindet at home today please?"
"Errm..which one?"
"It's a Mrs. Dee Pindet we'd like to speak to?"

After a couple of months of this we decided that we had enough pens and started thinking about the relative merits of annoying minor celebrities. About this time a certain Stuart Hall was on the telly a lot. News slots, sport reporting, It's a Knockout. His trademark look was a stripy shirt, white collar and outrageous ties. I couldn't stand the cunt and rather than having to listen to the local news and be outraged by his neckwear I started making plain paper ties that you could blutak to your TV screen thus reducing retinal pain by up to 20%.

One evening my friend and I penned a letter to Mr Hall addressed to him at the TV studios he worked from suggesting that we could start up a fanclub for him. We even floated the idea of custom paper ties for members. If I recall correctly we went for random pseudonyms and were surprised and delighted to receive a nice big envelope franked by the BBC addressed to Aard Strider and Jericho Cadbury. Along with the signed photos ("all the best Aard & Jerry!") was a genuine offer for us to run his fanclub and speak to his 'people' about financial remuneration. He even liked the paper tie idea.

Sadly due to the massive drugs, we never followed him up on his offer and he ended up going to jail. Jericho and I drifted apart. He'd kept our scrapbook of silly junk mail and the correspondence from Stuart and other minor celebrities we'd annoyed.

A few years ago I bumped into Jericho and asked him if he'd kept any of the letters. He reckoned they were somewhere in his loft, couldn't be arsed looking for them but if they turned up he'd let me know.

I looked him up on Facebook last week and sent him a message to ask about the evidence of our creative genius and he basically told me to fuck off as he had more important things to worry about on his life and that I should just fucking grow up. I'm sure he's still got everything filed away in his loft.

If this isn't an example of a surly archivement then frankly I'll be sausaged.
(riffjedibaby almost 1,000 chickens, Fri 17 Oct 2014, 16:38, 1 reply)

i love hallowe'en
i go all-out with the decorations and, the last few years, i've been dressing myself up in ever scarier costumes.
last year, i dressed as a zombie, with full make-up, fake blood everywhere and a fake bite mark. i rigged the front door with fishing line so i could open it from the living room and let whoever was outside see me come shambling and moaning down the hall, with a bowl of sweets clasped loosely in my gore-streaked hands. i was really pleased with how good it all looked.
i was even more pleased - and more than a little proud - that my costume actually made 3 kids cry that night. going to see if i can top that this year.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 17 Oct 2014, 15:25, 13 replies)

The Beast of Cubicle Four
Not me (really - I'd be quite proud if it was) but someone in our office lays the longest cables I have ever seen. We cannot quite figure out who it is but have narrowed it down to a small group of three. It's always in the same toilet (cubicle 4, hence the subject line) and whichever one of them it is has a terrible time dropping his logs, judging by the sounds I once heard coming out of there. There was a total set of "Oohs & ows", a long, drawn-out "gawwwwwd" - finally culminating in a classic 'Oh, Jeeeeeeesus..."

It's a matter of small regret to me that I didn't hang around long enough to see who came out of there, but this was as it became generally noted. It's also been the cause of a rather eloquent sign that now sits on the back of each toilet door, where it cannot fail to be seen by anyone sat on the bog, and says: 'Please ensure that flushing has the desired effect, even if you have to flush more than once.'

Don't know who this man is, but I doff a metaphorical cap to him.
(zebideedoodah likes florence but prefers venice, Fri 24 Oct 2014, 1:32, 10 replies)

I entered a new 'mother-in-law' joke competition run by a bloke-based wedding website
and got second place behind Dave Spikey but beat Shappi Khorsandi and Gary Delaney.

As reported in the Daily Mail:

and plenty of other news papers/websites.


No prize except kudos and the vague hope that loads of people were wondering who the shuddering fuck I was and did I have a DVD out for Christmas.
( Afinkawan Yes I can hear you Clem Fandango, Wed 22 Oct 2014, 15:23, 16 replies)

Car Talk, the show on NPR
once had a show in which the subject of slipstreaming came up. A caller wanted to know if getting into the slipstream behind a lorry would actually increase your car's efficiency. The answer, of course, is that it does because you're not having to push aside air with your car so there's less drag on it.

The hosts, Tom and Ray, got into an involved discussion on the subject and concluded with the thought that having a long line of lorries driving close together was the most efficient way of moving cargo on the highways as they could take turns in each other's slipstreams to increase their efficiency, then moved on to the next caller.

On their website they have a link where you can send them questions and comments. I wrote them, referencing the bit about slipstreaming, and commented, "Congratulations! You've just invented the train!"

They read it on the air. It made me proud.
( Wanderer, Fri 17 Oct 2014, 10:31, Reply)

At a picnic
a female friend was telling me off for making a joke about girls not being able to throw. Apparently it was nonsense and there was no reason to believe that I, as a not even especially sporty man, could throw any better than anyone else.

Mid harangue, I managed to launch a marshmallow down her gullet.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 17 Oct 2014, 9:59, 5 replies)

When 18, someoene challenged me to a 'drink a pint of bitter through a straw and see who wins' at a birthday party. I won.
A new challenger arrived. 'I bet I could beat you!' he proclaimed.
'Not so fast, stranger. I have already proven my worth. Let us duel as I once did'.
So I had another pint with a straw in, once again I won the day and was applauded.

Ulp.

Ulp...Ulp....

'I leave now victorious, my record undefeated, and shall return....' (ran to the bog, before I got to within a safe distance the vom was coming up, I tried to catch it but it cascaded off my hand and gracefully leaped onto the bathroom mirror as I entered the space to spew the lot up into the sink.

*Won".
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 17 Oct 2014, 0:36, Reply)

I was drinking in an after hours bar in Bangkok,
and one guy at the table is what I can only describe as a loud mouthed twat.

His conversation was along the lines of he was better than me, I was a posh cunt who had everything delivered to me on a plate ( both my parents worked as nurses, so he'd missed the mark a bit there), he was a self made man (he worked in a boiler room ripping off grannies for living), and he was more shrewd that Dr. Shrewdy McShrewdy who graduated with honours from the university of shrewd and is considered the world's leading authority on cunning. Apparently, no-one had ever put one over on him, and no-one ever would. All of this delivered in annoyingly over the top estuary English.

What I did was get hammered on expensive scotch, but every time the waitress brought me my drink and put the bill in the receptacle in front of me for when it was time to pay, I took the bill out and put it in his receptacle.

He didn't notice a thing.

Thanks for the drinks cunt.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Thu 16 Oct 2014, 22:14, 1 reply)

Alignment
Last week I was sitting in a very dull meeting. I was at one end of a long table with 4 or 5 people sitting in a line in front of me. As the boring speaker droned on I realised that the heads of those 4 or 5 people were almost aligned. I started to move my head sideways slightly, back and forth, until eventually I got in a position where all the heads were hidden behind the head of the person closest to me. "Yes!" I said under my breath (or so I thought), just at a quiet moment in the presentation. Everyone turned to look at me, surprised that I was so impressed with the explanation of business processes. It was the best thing that I achieved that day.
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 24 Oct 2014, 12:16, 1 reply)

I wrote a letter to Jeremy Hunt MP about his support of homeopathy...
...and because I'm a nerdy spod I published it on my website. Nothing happened for literally years.

Then a journalist found it, mentioned it in an article, and it has been following him round like a bad smell ever since.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Wed 22 Oct 2014, 18:07, 3 replies)

I was asked to join in work's Friday lunchtime 5-a-side game
I've never been any good at football but I was hoping to make a good impression so I said I'd do it. After running around, wheezing and coughing for about 40 minutes, I started to get the hang of it and 10 minutes before the end of the game I was on the outside of the penalty box, the ball came to my feet and I pushed it past the keeper. Given that I haven't really played football since I was at school, I was like, "That's the first goal I've scored since... since..." and I realised that I couldn't actually remember having scored a goal before.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Wed 22 Oct 2014, 10:20, 3 replies)

I once scored when I was in goal
I am a pretty shite footballer. I was playing in goal in a friendly when the opposition broke forward after my side was on the attack. They lumped the ball forward, leaving me a chase with their striker to get to the ball, I got there first, and nudged the ball past him. Unfortunately, I nudged it too far, and was in another 1-2-1 one charge with a midfielder. I beat him to the ball, and realised by now I was in the fucking centre circle. The players ahead of me seemed to part like the Red Sea, so I thought "fuck it" I'll keep going. I got in a tangle with a defender on the edge of their box but managed to get the ball off him again and broke forward. I then planted the ball precisely in the corner of the net. Best fucking goal I ever scored.

To top it all, thirty seconds later their striker broke 1-on-1 against me and I pulled off the best save of my "career" to deny him a goal. Which was nice.
(jrd, Tue 21 Oct 2014, 18:59, 2 replies)

Oooo, forgot this one.
I've got about 15 words/phrases in the Viz Profanisaurus and been printed in Private Eye a few times (including one post which made it to the 2013 Annual).
*prouds*
( Fray Brentos *mega-belms*, Mon 20 Oct 2014, 21:06, 6 replies)

Pub quiz
I got the exact answer on one of those maverick questions thrown out in the middle of pub quizzes. Question was "in what year did Mozart die". Without breaking stride, I just said '1791'. Won a bottle of prosecco.
Studied him in A-Level German about 20 years ago, dint I? Never thought it would come in handy. Well proud.
( Fray Brentos *mega-belms*, Mon 20 Oct 2014, 21:05, 15 replies)

Close the board!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29678989

Number's up, chaps...
( ousgg is not seeking approval, Sun 19 Oct 2014, 14:27, 6 replies)

I dun a poo

(McChinaman banned, Sat 18 Oct 2014, 18:33, 2 replies)

Radio 1...
Back when Edith Bowman and Colin Murray had a show on Radio 1, The Gladiators show was making a comeback and they asked the listeners to call in with new names for the gladiators. I was the passenger on my way to Manchester so texted my suggestion "Chlamydia".

I never thought I'd get a mention, but Colin did say live "Here's a suggestion from snee on the A14 - Chlamydia!"

I'm guessing his brain wasn't quite in gear at the time...
( snee held his breath since, Sat 18 Oct 2014, 11:11, Reply)