Family and personal stuff

LOL

A definition and a few examples


As all veterans of internet newsgroups will know, LOL is internet shorthand for 'Laughing Out Loud.' It ranks third in a hierarchy of four, namely (lowest first):
  • :-) (the familiar Smiley);
  • LOL itself:
  • ROTFL (= Rolling On The Floor Laughing); and
  • ROTFLMAO (= Rolling On The Floor Laughing My A*** Off) — or if you're American, ...Laughing My A** Off.

All of which is a roundabout way of introducing the following Things Ancient and Modern that have made me laugh out loud — and still do:

NOTE: The 'quotations' below are not verbatim but have been dredged from the depths of my increasingly dodgy memory.

Spike Milligan, on being told that Prince Charles was a Goon Show addict and great admirer:

"Grovelling little bastard. (I suppose a knighthood is out of the question now...?")

Sticker, seen on toilet-paper dispensers in the engineering faculty of an English university:

"SOCIOLOGY DEGREES: PLEASE TAKE ONE"

Sir John Mortimer, in Radio 4's Quote/Unquote

"Old age is when you bend down to tie up your shoelace and wonder whether there's anything else you could usefully be doing while you're down there"

Barry Cryer, talking about The Guardian (a newspaper noted for its rich crop of typographical errors):

"You should have seen how their TV column printed 'Ainsley Harriot's Big Cook-Out'")

Humphrey Lyttleton, speaking on the BBC's 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'
CAUTION: Demure ladies with unblemished reputations may fail to see what's funny here. They would be unwise to seek an explanation in refined company, and should also refrain from reading the thing aloud in the presence of clergy.

"I was stopped in Wolverhampton by a man who asked me: "Is your hat made of fox fur?"
I said "Yes it is. I told my brother I was coming to Wolverhampton and he said "Wear the fox hat."

Jackie Mason: Jewish American comedian

"That's the end of my show but I'm not going to leave the stage — I'm going to stay right here and watch you people leave the auditorium. If any of you want to stay in your seats and look at a Jew for ten minutes, that's OK too."

Robert Townsend: 1960s American business guru
Townsend is (was?) the man who converted Avis Rent-A-Car from a lossmaking basket case to a thriving and buoyant business in only two years. He subsequently wrote a brilliant book called 'Up The Organisation.' Here are his observations on personnel departments and company psychiatrists:

"Personnel departments are a waste of space. What you need is a People Girl, who will book airline tickets, make hotel reservations and so on. A good People Girl can handle this sort of thing for 200 people. If you have more people, so that you need a second People Girl, give one of them a desk in the north-eastern corner of the top floor and put the second one in the south-western corner of the basement. Then arrange lunch breaks, etc. so that they never meet. Otherwise they'll start a personnel department and bingo — your company is on the skids!"

"The typical company psychiatrist is a 47-year-old unmarried man who lives with his mother. Now I have nothing against single men of 47 who still live at home — until they become responsible for identifying abnormal behaviour in others"

Roy Brooks (who he?)
In the 1950s Roy Brooks was a senior director (chairman I think) of London estate agents E.H.Brooks. Saddened by the dreadful hype that is still such a feature of property ads, Brooks sacked his advertising agents and set about writing his own copy, the main feature of which was his apparently candid disclosure of problems (most of them invented by Brooks for comic effect). The ads appeared weekly in the quality Sunday press, and Brooks' risky strategy paid off handsomely when his company quickly gained cult status and became extremely profitable. Are they still in business, I wonder?

"This property perches on the very edge of a railway cutting into which one day it will inevitably fall."

"The house boasts the smallest room I have ever seen with the exception of some lavatories. With skilful treatment though, it may make a walk-in hotpress or a cosy bedsit for an undersized dwarf."

"...the material principally used in the decor appears to have been green porridge."

"Following a careless printing error in last week's advertisement, eleven people queued outside my office in the pouring rain from 8:30 last Sunday morning until the doors opened on Monday. I lay in my bed and thought of them with affection."

  Back to Personal Stuff Home Page