Temperance wrote:

Dizzy: "Go on then, Billly. Let's see you try!"
William: "I shall do it, sir! And what's more I require no wind assistance as your man did!"


The world book jumping record from a standing position was still Lord Palmerston's amazing fifteen from 1856, a feat achieved with considerable assistance from volumes of hot air at his rear and which few dared believe could ever be trumped in their lifetime. Gladstone, eyeing the sixteen tomes before him, believed otherwise.

Hypnotist Bert Boyce (centre right) ensuring he gets a seat on the 8am.

"Giving up the Crown was a great weight off our shoulders ... literally!"

The Res Historica bar. Renowned for it's cuisine of over ripe pickled gannets, excessive drunkedness, gossip, use of tobacco and general debauchery by all.

Winston Churchill.

What do you mean,'everyone else wears their bum bag to the back and on top of their clothes'?

Jeremy's days as postcard designer in WH Robertson & Sons were numbered, and he knew it. But he just didn't care anymore ... there was still the job as science correspondent for the Daily Mail to fall back on.

Face On the Corner of the Writing Desk: "Yes - that's right - down here - it's me who's speaking. And I said - why don't you two noisy so-and-sos clear off and take Beardy Big-Head with you. His silence is just deafening. I'd like to get back to sleep if that's not too much trouble."

Emily and Roger waited impatiently by the carriage for their turn. Lucy and Bertram had been hogging the only spot in the parish approved for eye-gazing and tentative arm-touching for over ten minutes now. Had they no sense of decorum, no fear of the elders? A door opened in the Temple of The Latter-day Evangelical Millerites behind them. This would all end in tears ...

Since Tesco began sourcing lobsters from the Dr Moreau Shellfish Company, the incidence of badly nipped fingers has declined markedly.

Millie and her sisters worked feverishly. Just one more, they knew, should be enough to keep the family fed for a month. But the tension was almost unbearable. The giant rabbits could come back at any moment ...

When I said I needed a new set of clothes my dear, this is not what I had in mind!

Tsar Nicholas and friends.

The Bolsheviks were dismayed to find that their initial attempt to execute the royal family by drowning had backfired so disastrously. The imperialist pig-dog buggers could float!

It was the third time in a week that Brother John had been sent to the Abbot for drawing silly penis pictures in his French exercise book.

The multinational fast food restaurant franchise, Shergar King, unveils its latest multimillion-pound fine art acquisition The Crookback's Last Steed and Squire.

May 1927 - A less than happy Lawrence Percival Smythe after a demonstration to fellows of the Royal Society of his newly patented clockwork "Smythe Automated Talking Navigation System" (or SAT-NAV for short) comes to a sorry end.

A young Richard of Gloucester, after being pushed into the castle woad vat, took out his displeasure during morning practice at the butts.

Oxford Tales #137: How Algernon got his First.

Islanddawn wrote:

Reason for editing: Because Temp said I had to!

No I didn't, ID. I just - as is the wont of the kindly, good-humoured and magnanimous Ricardian - pointed out that you had got your facts wrong and that it ruined your joke.

(Silly old ID put Richard of York when she probably meant Richard of Gloucester! As we all know Richard of York was our Richard's dad and he didn't have a hump - at least we don't think he did, but then you never can tell...)

Apologies for breaking the thread.

Yes, that's a perfect e flat. Now let's see what happens when I squeeze the other one.

Frederick Alsingham Esq. (aged 74) and his wife Elsie (aged 72) display the results of a lifelong ganja habit.

(British Medical Journal. Vol I. Iss. xii 1913)

Just be grateful that in the Middle Ages they didn't have Scratch'n'Sniff.

Steven Spielberg announces that filming has already begun on his forthcoming and historically accurate blockbuster Saving Richard Gloucester.

Kicking old Fred out of the lido and onto the jetty was just one of the attractions at Billy Butlin's new holiday camp venture in Skegness in 1936.

"Let's face it, it's still better than EasyJet!"

***

Original photographs of the Von Trapp Family Singers are extremely rare - here the troupe give a rendition of "Meine Lieblingssachen" in Klagenfurt, 1942.

The girls' glum faces gave the lie to their claim to be - as the Daily Mail put it - "lovin' their curves!"