SILLY SEASONS

12 things which people found hilarious between the wars:

1 Flatulence - eek! Sadly, anything to do with roughage, rumbling or raspberries was top notch humour material in the age of the flapper. Witness the fruit-obsessed song (later revived by Spike Milligan) about the village 'petomaine', who made a musical performance of his flatulence:

Though it isn't very pretty, you've got to admit it's cute,
So all together, let it go (sundry kazoo noises), eat more fruit!

2 Ethnic Sorts - Chinamen, Arabs, 'cannibal' natives - yee ha! But funniest of all back then was the humble Inuit (neé Eskimo), subject of many a ribald song and poem. How's about 'I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream' (I can just see Lionel Blair having a dicky ticker moment on Give Us a Clue trying to do that as a charade), which explains:

When he says come on let's go, though it's 45 below,
Listen what those Eskimos all holler:
(all together!) I scream you scream, we all scream for ice cream, ra! ra! ra!

3 Funny Voices - men with tight-trousered falsettos, little big-band sidekicks specially kept for their ability to dip to a rasping duck-honk; anything juddering, lisping, stammering, camp, Italiano or cod-horror - they lapped it up. I blame the Marx Brothers. For everything.

4 Wigan - we all need a joke town to name-check, but why Wigan, all but as reviled now as back in them days?

Oh you live up in Wigan?
Well, don't blame that on me...

...claims a copper in the deliberately irritating ditty 'Shut the Door, They're Coming Through the Window'. Wigan pier, Wigan kebabs, Wigan as the epicentre of 'circus-skills' dancing. Ooh stop it or I'll send you up to Auntie Edith in Wigan! She'll sort you.

5 Prunes - oh, what better than a fruit (hurrah!) that has bowel (twice hurrah!) connotations? And it's wrinkly! And it has a silly name that sounds mildly rude! Join me now as I croon:

No matter how young a prune may be,
it's always full of wrinkles.
We may get them on our face,
prunes get 'em every place!

6 A Glimpse of Stocking - nowadays, young college babes aiming to shock bother metal detectors with multi-piercings, wear thongs (is there anything less erotic than the thong?) just below their shoulder blades and feed us with blogs about their love lives, but back in the 1920s, a fad appeared which shocked and awed America - the sock! Yes, rad college girls would roll their stockings down to look like male socks, hence giving American males the first ever sight of the lightly-downed female patella, hence the song 'Roll 'Em, Girls':

Roll 'em down and show your pretty knees.
Even grouchy traffic cops get jolly,
When they see you step on to a trolley!

7 Belly Dancing - it's got sex, it's got ethnicity, it's got timpani - it's a roll-over scream! Princeton gals may have offered a downy knee, but cor, those middle Eastern ones, they had their tummy-buttons out and about and everything! Here's what 'Egyptian Ella' was capable of when she shook her bread-basket at the locals:

Every sheikh in the audience
Jumps up and offers her love intense (in tents?).
Oh how they love Egyptian Ella!

8 Foreign Climes - ah, Timbuktu, so much to answer for! Noel Coward knew that he had a sure-fire hit if he name-checked a bucket-load of far-flung locations, a spattering of gurning natives, and Johnny Englishman offering his rosy stiff upper lip to the sun:

In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock
They foam at the mouth and run
But mad dogs and Englishman
Stay out in the midday sun!

The Eskimo, not eligible for this song on a technical point, had to make do with a comeback in the puerile but jaunty rival travelogue 'When it's Night-time in Italy, it's Wednesday Over Here'.

9 Naturists - always a fair and square figure of fun, long before the fad for 'nudist films', there were songs such as 'Nellie the Nudist Queen' which pitches bawdy puns seldom found outside of the George Formby songbook. Naughty naked Nell manages to escape the attentions of some auditors - how? Well:

When she showed her assets,
Boy, her assets were immense!

10 Yodelling - Somewhere on this earth, there are isolated pockets where yodelling is taken seriously. But 'The Yodelling Chinaman' has it all - silly voices, ethnicity, and, boom boom, trump card, it has yodelling! The song begins:

In the café the other day, down in Chinatown
There I sat in a Chinese hat with black men, yellow and brown.
Plinky Plinky Poo said, 'Quietness please'
Pakee Pakee Poo will sing...

and soon we are treated to a fine exhibition of high-pitched comedy yodelling, never since equalled. Mildly offensive it may be, but few will fail to grin a little.

11 Homosexuality - Still all very codified, back then, but few were in doubt of the real subject matter behind 'Let's All be Fairies', in which a singer as camp as a red squirrel tells of two 'great big burly boxers' who decide to throw the fight because they secretly want to be fairies ('Don't be afraid if I shove you, you can't imagine how I laaaave you.'):

We'll go wimsy wamsy, on tiptoe, we'll say dash dash!
Let's all be fairies - tinkle tinkle, crash crash crash!

12 Prostitution - nudge nudge, wink wink. Rewriting myths and fairy tales from a feminist perspective, eh? Long before the masses of contemporary female writers found their subject, it was being done by jazz big bands. Witness, this tale of Red Riding Hood empowering herself:

How could Little Red Riding Hood have been so very good
And still keep the wolf from the door?
Why was she dressed up in bright flaming red
Unless she expected to knock someone dead?

Laugh, I nearly dyed.

Source: by RcL; influenced by Silly Songs of the '20s and '30s (BBC) which is rare as hen's teeth.

 
VITAMIN Q SPELLING BEE

Which 7 of these 25 words are spelled incorrectly (NB in English, not US English etc):

1 harassment
2 anaesthesia
3 exhilarate
4 innocuous
5 dysentry
6 misspell
7 minuscule
8 hipocrisy
9 liquefy
10 quantitative
11 diarrhoea
12 maintenance
13 commission
14 supercede
15 gauging
16 irresistible
17 hierarchical
18 fulfillment
19 guacamole
20 brocolli
21 privelege
22 manoeuvering
23 mystify
24 licensee
25 desiccate

Answers are to be found a few items below, after the 'king' lists...

 
NAGGING COUGHS

An 1863 legal advice book lists 56 'defects and diseases' of horses to be wary of when buying one, including:

"...glanders, farcy, "chink in the chine" (spinal problem eg sway back), strangles, poll evil, grease, grogginess, Mallenders and Sallenders (leg afflictions), thick wind, roaring, gutta serena (glass eye), enlarged hock, founder (fever in the feet), nasal gleet, Sandcrack and wind-sucking..."

...while other equine ailments include...

'sidebones, ringbone, grease heel, road puffs, thorough pin, monkey mouth, jack spavin, stringhalt, heaving, weaving, bog spavin, surra, parrot mouth, curbs, louping ill, sweeney and cribbing'.

A 17th century cure for a horse with congestion was to flush its nostrils with a mixture of snuff, mustard, garlic and strong ale, often using feathers to brush the mixture in. 'Fleaguing' was the practice of treating a lazy or sick horse with a raw ginger suppository to 'liven it up', especially before a horse sale. Especially sluggish horses could expect the rather more drastic treatment of the insertion of a live eel into the back passage.

Source: various (first list and 'cures' reproduced in the excellent 'Forgotten English' by J Kacirk, Quill 1997)

 
LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!

Those lyrics from 'Bohemian Rhapsody' explained:

1 Scaramouche - originally 'Scarramuccia', one of the stock figures in Italian Commedia del'Arte theatre; a swashbuckling beau dressed in black who was never quite as brave as he pretended
2 Figaro - a Spanish first name, best known from the witty and rebellious barber in Beaumarchais' novels Le Barbier de Séville and Le Mariage de Figaro, both later made into operas
3 silhouetto - Italian for silhouette, an outline seen against a lighter background, named, for unknown reasons, after Etienne de Silhouette, 18th century French finance minister. The cutting of silhouette shapes and profiles became a fad.
4 Bismillah - an Arabic interjection meaning 'in the name of God'
5 Beelzebub - chief spirit of evil, the name means 'lord of the flies' and was first used for a Philistine god. Milton uses the name for Satan's right-hand fallen angel in Paradise Lost. The name is sometimes used as a synonym for 'Satan'.
6 magnifico - Italian word for magnificent or, by extension, a Venetian nobleman or any high ranking person
7 fandango - a Spanish courtship dance in triple time, performed by a couple, often employing castanets
8 Galileo - Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and philosopher (1564 - 1642)

Source: various

 
LONG LIVE THE KING!

A Vitamin Q kings list special!

Kings of food and drink:

1 King of beers - Budweiser
2 King of rices - basmati / carnaroli
3 King of nuts - almond
4 King of stout - Guinness
5 King of puddings - 4 eggs, 1 pt milk, 8oz sugar, 4oz breadcrumbs, 4 tbsp jam, 1 tsp vanilla essence
6 King of wines - Tokay / champagne
7 King of fruits - mango / durian
8 King of spices - pepper
9 King of cheese - parmigiano reggiano
10 King of red wine - Cabarnet Sauvignon
11 King of blues / English cheeses - stilton
12 King of mushrooms - shiitake
13 King of white wine - Chardonnay
14 King of the sea - North European crayfish
15 King of 'winter taste'- echizen crab (Japanese delicacy)
16 King of Italian wines - Barolo

Kings of the natural world:

1 King of beasts / the jungle - lion
2 King of the sea - herring
3 King of woods - teak
4 King of terriers - Airedale
5 King of birds - wren
6 King of trees - oak
7 King of hair - bhringaraj ('hair restoring' herb)
8 King of hunting dogs - Weimaraner
9 King of the mountain - tiger
10 King of herbs - ginseng
11 King of the garden - rhododendrons
12 King of fish - salmon / sturgeon
13 King of Spain's trumpeter - old name for a donkey
14 King of flowers - peony
15 King of dyes - indigo
16 King of the forest - Scots pine

Some fictitious monarchs:

1 King of New York - (gangster Frank White as played by Christopher Walken)
2 King of the Jungle - Tarzan (one of the monkeyman's monickers)
3 King of the Hill - Hank Hill (animated redneck with a conscience)
4 King of Comedy - Rupert Pupkin (wannnabe in the movie of same name)
5 King of the fairies - Oberon (Shakespeare's fairy king)
6 King of Terror - ? (Nostradamus' unidentified apocalyptic leader)
7 King of the Trows - Broonie (troll leader in Scottish folklore)

Some things which are kings of their domains:

1 King of gems - ruby
2 King of trails - Highway 75 from Winnipeg to Galveston
3 'King of carpet cleaning' - Dry-Chem
4 King of craftsmen - blacksmiths
5 King of instruments - trombone / pipe organ
6 King of crystals - diamond
7 King of sports - horse racing
8 King of trains - the Orient Express
9 King of scents - amber resin
10 King of metals - gold

Some other people nicknamed or self-styled as kings:

1 King of steel - Andrew Carnegie (magnate fae Fife)
2 King of one-liners - Henry Youngman (US comic)
3 King of the pulps - Max Brand (writer of westerns etc)
4 King of the witches - Alex Sanders (British mystic)
5 King of the mini-series - Richard Chamberlain
6 King of terror - Genghis Khan (Oriental warlord)
7 King of origami hearts - Francis Ow (paper folder)
8 King of clout - Babe Ruth (baseball basher)
9 King of Off Broadway - Edward Albee (US playwright)
10 King of the wild frontier - Davy Crockett (pioneer and folk hero)
11 King of beige - Giorgio Armani (fancy togmaker)
12 King of hops - Michael Jackson (beer expert, a pun on his namesake)
13 King of Hollywood - Clark Gable
14 King of Welsh rugby - Barry John
15 King of the showmen - Pat Collins (fairground legend)
16 King of the ice - Elvis Stojko (skater)
17 King of the paparazzi - Rino Barillari
18 King of Hay-on-Wye - Richard Booth (self-styled king of Welsh town)
19 King of clowns - Felix Adler
20 King of blood - Edwin Cohn (biologist)
21 King of Stonehenge - the Amesbury Archer (unknown skeleton)
22 King of mystery - John Dickson Carr (crime writer)
23 King of the ferret leggers - Reg Mellor (top man of arcane and painful sport)
24 King of X - John Holmes (well-hung tragic star of naughty films)
25 King of horror- Stephen King
26 King of the Gipsies - Bamfylde Moore Carew (English vagabond)
27 King of the cowboys - Roy Rogers
28 King of Kings - Joshua bar-Joseph (aka Jesus Christ)
29 King of chefs - Auguste Escoffier
30 King of cocktails - Dale DeGroff (mover and shaker)
31 King of handcuffs - Harry Houdini (alas, not king of Canuck college boys)
32 King of Pirates - Edward Teach (aka Blackbeard)
33 King of spam - Alan Ralsky (businessman)
34 King of wildcatters - Hugh Ray Cullen (oil prospector)
35 King of the Stretford End - Denis Law (60s / 70s Scottish soccer star for Manchester Utd)
36 King of bark - Christopher III of Scandinavia (added tree bark to his subjects' food during a famine)
37 King of runners - Paavo Nurmi (aka the Flying Finn)
38 King of painters - Parrhasios (ancient Greek dauber)

Source: various by RcL (The King of Q)

SPELLING ANSWERS: the wrong ones are 5 / 8 / 14 / 18 / 20 / 21 / 22

 
THE DRINK TALKING

Things which, if you sit with a group of friends in a bar for long enough, you will, eventually discuss:

1 your middle names
2 first crush on a famous person
3 embarrassing vomit stories
4 relationships with your siblings
5 sweets, toys and TV from the past
6 childhood nicknames
7 the one drink you can't drink anymore
8 first record bought
9 your parent's first names
10 'unbelievable' coincidences
11 loss of virginity particulars
12 prizes or competitions you have won
13 paranormal experiences

 
YOU THE READER part 2

Another dozen web searches which ended up here at Vitamin Q:

1 Skorpio the Nemesis
2 get rid of a wasp's nest
3 Opie & Opie
4 calvin French surname
5 big lub
6 anthony quin pictures as quasimodo
7 gay incest tales
8 tricky dick honest abe
9 big beefhead
10 sage of springfield
11 get rid of wild strawberries
12 do dobird of life

Source: my tracker. Glad to be (mainly) of service!

 
ALL YOU NEED

The Beatles' 'love' songs:

1 Hallelujah, I Love Her So
2 Love Me Do
3 PS I Love You
4 All My Loving
5 She Loves You
6 And I Love Her
7 Can't Buy Me Love
8 Words of Love
9 You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
10 It's Only Love
11 Love You To
12 Lovely Rita
13 Step Inside Love
14 All You Need Is Love
15 Real Love

 
THE ROAD TO ELEVENHAM

Some number related British place names:

Onecote (Staffs)
Two Bridges (Devon)
Two Dales (Derbys)
Two Gates (Staffs)
Twopenny Knowe (Strathclyde)
Three Bridges (W Sussex)
Three Chimneys (Kent)
Three Cocks (Powys)
Three Crosses (W Glamorgan)
Three Cups Corner (E Sussex)
Three Holes (Lincs)
Three Legs Cross (E Sussex)
Three Legged Cross (Dorset)
Three Mile Cross (Berks)
Three Miletown (Lothian)
Three Oaks (E Sussex)
Three Pikes (Cumbria)
Three Sisters (Highland)
Four Ashes (Suffolk)
Four Cabots (Guernsey)
Four Crosses (Powys)
Four Elms (Kent)
Four Forks (Somerset)
Four Gotes (Cambs)
Four Lanes (Cornwall)
Four Marks (Hants)
Four Mile Bridge (Gwynedd)
Four Oaks (W Midlands / E Sussex)
Four Roads (Dyfed)
Four Throws (Kent)
Fourpenny (Highland)
Fourstones (Northumberland)
Five Ash Down (E Sussex)
Five Ashes (E Sussex)
Five Bells (Somerset)
Five Oak Green (Kent)
Five Oaks (W Sussex / Jersey)
Five Penny Borve (Lewis)
Five Roads (Dyfed)
Five Sisters (Highland)
Five Ways (Birmingham)
Fivehead (Somerset)
Fivelanes (Cornwall)
Six Ashes (Staffs)
Six Mile Bottom (Cambs)
Six Rues (Jersey)
Six Hills (Lincs)
Sixpenny Handley (Dorset)
Seven Ash (Somerset)
Seven Dials (London)
Seven Kings (London)
Seven Sisters (W Glamorgan / London)
Seven Stones (Cornwall)
Seven Wells (Gloucs)
Sevenhampton (Gloucs / Wilts)
Sevenoaks (Kent)
Eight Ash Green (Essex)
Nine Ashes (Essex)
Nine Barrow Down (Dorset)
Nine Elms (Wilts)
Ninebanks (Northumberland)
Ninemile Bar (Dumfries)
Ten Mile Bank (Norfolk)
Twelve Oaks (E Sussex)
Twelveheads (Cornwall)
Sixteen Foot Drain (Lincs)
Twenty (Lincs)
Twenty Foot River (Lincs)
Forty Foot (Cambs)
Forty Hill (London)

Source: various

 
THE FROTH REPORT

102 ways of talking nonsense:

apple-sauce * babble * balderdash * balls * baloney * bilge * blabber * blah * blarney * blather * blethers * bop * bollocks * bombast * bosh * bullshit * bunkum * cant * claptrap * clishmaclaver * cobblers * cock * codswallop * crap * crock * drivel * drool * eyewash * fiddle-faddle * flapdoodle * flannel * flim-flam * fluff * flummery * folderol * froth * fudge * fustian * gabble * garbage * gas * gammon * gibberish * goop * guff * havers * hocus-pocus * hogwash * hokum * hooey * hoo-hah * horse-feathers * humbug * jaberwocky * jargon * jaw * jazz * jigery-pokery * jive * junk * keech * kelter * malarkey * mince * moonshine * mummery * mumbo-jumbo * nonsense * pablum * palaver * phooey * piffle * pishposh * poppycock * prattle * punk * rigmarole * rodomontade * rot * rubbish * scat * skimble-skamble * slipslop * spew * stuff * strumming * taradiddle * tomfoolery * tommyrot * tosh * toss * trash * tripe * trumpery * twaddle * waffle * wankage * whangdoodle * wind * windbaggery * wishwash * yadda-yadda

Source: various; collated and escalated by straight-talking guy RcL. Know of others (words, not phrases, in or adopted by any form of English), do you? Then do let me know...

 
NAME THAT NAG

12 names which might do for a pony but not a fully-grown horse:

Tarmac
Ariadne
Bawbee
The Pride of Strathmiglo
Juniper
The Corporal's Sleeve
Zydeco
Cumulus
Skipper
Amulet
Cottonsocks
Lumpy

Source: RcL

 
SHOOT THE DOGGEREL

10 poems which didn't make it into any of my three books:

1 The Modern Love Scene
2 Zwingli's Florist
3 My Week With Billie Piper
4 Poem Beginning With a Line By Roddy Lumsden
5 You Can Run and You Can Also Hide
6 Jenny Joseph's Warning
7 In the Black Role Models Room at Madame Tussauds
8 A Brief History of Contraception
9 Haggis Bolognaise
10 The King of Marmalade Wine

 
WHAT DOES IT MEAN CITY

A dozen examples of Glaswegian slang:

1 mollicate - in Glasgow, this means to defeat, to batter or tear to pieces, as in 'ony mair o' yer lip, Carole Ann, ye wee scunner, an' ahm comin through tae mollicate ye' or 'Ahm no goan back tae see Thistle, they aye get mollicatit.'

2 no danger! - easy, no problems, no worries, it's apples, don't fret, everythin's gonna be all right baby! As in, 'ah cuid len ye a fiver no danger, big man.'

3 varicose veins - children. This is Glaswegian rhyming slang: veins = weans = children.

4 big man - Take a few centuries, add Italians and the Irish to an already short Scots stock and you have an average male adult height of 5 foot 5. Hence, anyone (or family pet or inanimate object) over this height is referred to as 'big man'. As in, 'Yawrigh, big man? Seez wan ae yer oven chips.'

5 the wee Malkie - a bogeyman, or anything nasty or sinister. Why a small person called Malcolm should be Glasgow's bogeyman is a mystery. The term 'malkie' is also used for that most Glaswegian of pleasantries, the headbutt or 'Glasgow kiss'.

6 this is me since yesterday! - meaning I'm exhausted and I've been non-stop busy for a whole day. Said exclusively by elderly women on public transport. I suggest it as a replacement for Glasgow's slogan 'Glasgow's Miles Better', which has been cynically reinterpreted as Glasgow's Smile's Bitter and Glasgow's Males Batter.

7 y'dancin? y'askin? Ahm askin. Ahm dancin. - Social exchange still to be heard in dens of the night. The dance in question will inevitably be either (in clotheshorse clubs) a frotting shamble to nosebleed white label techno or (everywhere else) The Slosh, a proto-line dance beloved by Glaswegians of all ages and sizes.

8 ya dancer! - a cry of triumph. Apparently short for dancing bear. What dancing bears have to do with it, I do not know (but see above). See also 'ya beauty!' which is not strictly Glaswegian.

9 ginger - the term for any fizzy drink, no matter the colour or flavour, but particularly Barr's Irn Bru, the ginger coloured soda with the hard to describe taste which is rife in Glasgow (one of the few world cities where cola is not the best selling soft drink). As in 'Haw Shug, goan get's a bottly ginger, by the way.'

10 ahwsl'ah! - a two syllable, slurred shortening of 'I was like that', accompanied by the suitable facial expression (triumph, disgust, yawn), used when recounting a piquant adventure from recent history, eg 'he goes to me aye, that Gucci suit is hauf price and ahwsl'ah' (grins ear to ear).

11 see you! - An angry or mock-angry way of getting someone's attention or accusing them of some miserable failing: 'See you Davie, yer a toerag an a patter merchant an' ah mean it!'

12 defiNATEly! - a word implying emphasis, still widely used despite the fact that 12% of Glaswegians now know the word 'definitely' is not spelt with an 'a'.

Source: RcL is pure dead brilliant

 
Hello and welcome to Vitamin Q, a temple of triviality...

Just to remind you: this site belongs to Roddy Lumsden, a puzzle writer and poet from Scotland now living in Bristol in England. It's a place where I post lists, curiosities and fragments which please me as a lover of trivia and reference. They tend to reflect my interests which include pop, nature, words, Scotland, food, folklore and literature. I post a few items most weeks, so do bookmark and return.

If you wish to reprint any lists online, please include the source, or credit both me and this site if it is an original list. You can offer ideas, lists, corrections and book deals via the email address. I strive to come up with original presentation of material here, but sometimes I adapt and adopt from other sources, on and off line. If you feel I have purloined, let me know and I will make amends.

If you've surfed in from good old Google, you may find that what you want is in the archive, not on this page, but I hope you have fun searching! the two apparently Most Wanted Lists on this site are the presidential nicknames and the strawberries in arts and films which can both be found in the January archive. Now read on, and don't forget there's crisps and crumbs of hopeless knowledge aplenty in the archive - just click on the dates up on the left...

 
YOU THE READER

12 recent search engine queries which ended up here at Vitamin Q*:

1 pregnancy pica metal
2 borange rhymes orange
3 novels by journalists**
4 swingball toy game
5 bruce wayne loves barbara gordon
6 Billy Corgan hates Michael Jackson
7 Happy Families Bun
8 Holly Stibbs
9 'Mr Bacon' toy
10 autobigraphy of President Manuel Quezon
11 snood player names
12 swedish singer love can build a bridge

"Animal public with your many tongues and tastes"

*bringing you the pearls of inconsequence since, oh, last August!

**you are one sick puppy!

Source: my tracker

 
REALLY CRASS LIST

A dozen subjects, companies and organisations which share my initials:

1 Romance and Classical Languages
2 Research on Contemplative Life
3 Roadkill Command Language
4 Royal Canadian Legion
5 Responsive Cargo Logistics
6 Racing Club Lens
7 Resources for Christian Living
8 Real Combat League
9 Robotics and Control Laboratory
10 Rugby Club Luxembourg*
11 Revised Common Lectionary
12 Rockwell City Lytton

*Also Retriever Club Luxembourg (what, is Luxembourg one big middle class commune?)

Source: google (I've left out 'R---- C---- Limited' as there are so many)

 
HITS OF THE 90s

My suggestion for a compilation:

1 Kate Bush - Love and Anger
2 Orbital - Chime
3 The Blue Nile - Saturday Night
4 Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
5 REM - Losing My Religion
6 U2 - The Fly
7 Saint Etienne - Hobart Paving
8 Bruce Springsteen - Streets of Philadelphia
9 Whigfield - Saturday Night
10 Spice Girls - 2 Become 1
11 Natalie Imbruglia - Torn
12 Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony
13 White Town - Your Woman
14 Superstar - Superstar
15 New Radicals - You Get What You Give

(Selection from Top 50 UK hits only)

 
WHAT DO POETS DO ALL DAY?

The 'Who's Who' hobbies of 10 poets:

1 Les Murray - ruminative driving
2 Paul Muldoon - electric guitar
3 Carol Ann Duffy - holidays
4 John Heath-Stubbs - taxonomy
5 Charles Causley - the rediscovery of his native town
6 Edwin Morgan - scrapbooks
7 Thom Gunn - cheap thrills
8 Peter Redgrove - judo
9 Douglas Dunn - philately
10 Vernon Scannell - loathing Tories and New Labour

Source: Who's Who 2002. Thanks to Hamish Ironside.

 
PSEUDONYMS CORNER

11 groups of people who generally don't use their real names:

1 Magicians - though some prestidigitators have ever felt it beneath them, most still agree that a good and silly stage name looks tidy on a poster, for example Mephisto, The Great Cardini or The Mighty Kazimir.

2 People in chatrooms - as long as you understand that dookiedawg21 did not receive that soubriquet from his parents, and that deedee is actually a hanky-happy, spotty adolescent called Josh, then all's fair.

3 Rappers - since many rappers were saddled with questionable names like Tracy, Marshall and Duwayne, it's understandable that when toting their phat wares, they prefer to be, say, Da Professah, Foxee-D or Badd Dogg.

4 Gossip columnists - especially of the political sort, they need to protect their sources and their delicate nosebones, and to avoid legal fees so they become Peterborough, Monteith or Smallweed.

5 Brazilian footballers - since the Portuguese langauge encourages speakers (in much the way the German langauge loves compound nouns like Selbstbedienungslebensmittelgeschaft) to build their names until they are something like Arnoldo di Salvo Famagusta di Argumento, and since room on shirtbacks is limited, Brazilian kickers tend to stick to being Ernesto, Zico and Vamosinho.

6 Performance poets - these are often magnetically drawn to performance names which tag their style, see Mr Social Control, Skorpio the Nemesis, Salena Saliva.

7 Romantic novelists - it is the unbreakable law that they should have wistful or fluffy names such as Candida Somerset, Cressida Woodruffe or Maureen O'Malley, a law punishable by three years in the febrile grip of a buckle-swinging cad, even for those - the majority of them - who are actually elderly men.

8 Crossword setters - the reason for setter names is lost in the mist, but may be to do with tax, or the fact that many early setters were clergymen, who felt such fripperies as puzzles needed to be kept a secret. A setter should aim for a plucky and important sounding name such as Ximenes or Ganymede or a short one like Pod.

9 Clowns - the ringmaster screams, let's hear it for Trevor Jenkins and Phil Smith everybody! No, doesn't ring quite right (excuse the pun). And so clowns are Cocky, Magnifico or, more often than not, Joey.

10 Racing tipsters - for obvious reasons ie the 50/50 problem of your house being staked out either by sore bookies or skint punters carrying baseball bats, tipsters tend to use names such as Nap, Racecard or Bert.

11 Spies and Terrorists - for reasons even more obvious! Good spy names might be Clarion, Goshawk or Five-One-Zero. Good terrorist names are Brendan 'the Babyeater' Flanagan , Pepe the Hyena and (an especially successful suggestion) Osama Bin Laden.

Source: RcL

 
OF THE TRADE

The 10 'best tools of all time':

1 Duct Tape
2 Vice-Grips
3 Spray Lubricants
4 Margarine Tubs With Clear Lids
5 Big Rock At The Side Of The Road
6 Plastic Zip Ties
7 Ridiculously Large Standard Screwdriver With Lifetime Guarantee
8 Bailing Wire
9 Bonking Stick (technically known as a tie-rod-end separator)
10 A Quarter and a Phone Booth

Source: netscrap.com

 
SIGNATURE PRODUCTS

The 10 most common prescription drugs among elderly Americans:

1 Lanoxin (heart problems)
2 Prilosec (ulcers)
3 Norvasc (hypertension and angina)
4 K-Dur 20 (potassium supplement)
5 Pepcid (stomach and ulcer problems)
6 Imdur (heart disease)
7 Synthroid (thyroid disease and cancer)
8 Vasotec (blood and heart problems)
9 Procardia (hypertension)
10 Zoloft (depressive illness)

 
TOP HOPS

Best world beers and lagers, as voted online by keen drinkers:

1 Guinness (Ireland)
2 Sierra Nevada (California)
3 Sam Adams Boston Lager (Boston)
4 Hoegaarden (Belgium)
5 Pete's Wicked Ale (California)
6 Grolsch (Netherlands)
7 Heineken (Netherlands)
8 Pilsner Urquell (Czech Rep)
9 Newcastle Brown Ale (N England)
10 Bass (Burton, England)

Source: duke.edu (My ultimate vote goes to Arctic Red, from the Yukon, with Sierra Nevada close behind. Lager? Steinlager from New Zealand is good and for UK real ales, well, I'll choose Deuchars IPA from Scotland and Young's Waggledance from London)

 
BOOMTOWNS

The fastest growing US cities of the 1990s:

1 Phoenix, Arizona
2 Charlotte, N Carolina
3 El Paso, Texas
4 Austin, Texas
5 San Antonio, Texas
6 San Jose, California
7 San Diego, California
8 Jacksonville, Florida
9 Houston, Texas
10 Dallas, Texas

Source: US census - these cities grew by around 10-20% in a decade (note the drift southwards)

 
LOVE BUGS

The 10 most popular 'pet names for cars' in the UK:

1 Betsy / Bessie
2 Fred
3 Baby
4 Bertha
5 Betty
6 George
7 Daisy
8 Herbie
9 Henry
10 Bertie

Source: fish4cars survey

 
BOW SELECTOR

The 12 most popular erhu (Chinese bowed instrument) melodies:

1 Moon reflection in Erquan
2 The flowing river water
3 The narrative music of Yu Provision
4 Racing Horses
5 The birds sing in country side
6 The enchant evening
7 Loving song of Kangding
8 The Sanmen gorge caprice
9 Moonlight night
10 Autumn moon over Han Palace
11 The tea picking and butterfly catching
12 The Nanni Bay

Source: chinasprout.com (these are the translated English titles)

 
HEART STILL FULL

The 25 most common words found in the 'Nation's Favourite Poems' as voted for in the UK in 1995:

heart / one / down / eyes / hear / light / night / day / away / back / come / heard / long / over / sky / still / air / beneath / came / full / high / moon / once / round / again

Source: flatearth.co.uk/poemblender (which explains the maths, which I'll spare you here)