You can make up your own stories to go with this!!
It came from a BBC Radio comedy show I listened to in distant childhood (I forget the name of it at the moment... but perhaps a commenter can remind me), which featured a challenge to its panellists/participants to contrive an extended story leading with inexorable logic to a punchline such as this - not always quite a pun, but a playful variation on (some might say a 'mangling of') a well-known phrase or saying. Hours of fun!
Another I recall particularly fondly was: "This creation is Tibet.... or part of Ella."
(Harder to surmise the story behind this one; something to do with aerial reconnaissance photography and furtive romantic assignations in a dark-room on an RAF station during WWII, I think.)
This game was rather similar to the "Keats & Chapman" stories, one of the regular-ish features in the Irish Times funny column written by Flann O'Brien, one of my favourite comic writers. I don't have time to give examples now; but do go check them out some time.
3 comments:
3 new posts at once! how shall I ever concentrate on work, knowing these 3 are waiting to be read/commented upon?
Oh, and now that I've read this last post, i see you've given me loads of wordplay with which to amuse myself.
I think I'll write it out on a post-it and add it to my computer screen. let's see if it prompts a story by the end of the week.
have you already got your story?
Well, I think the original story was situated in a convent in.... Northern Italy, say (they have a lot of convents there). Outside the chapel is a striking white marble statuette, a head-and-shoulders portrait of the saint who founded the order. One day, the nuns awake and shuffle off to morning prayers.... and are horrified to discover that the statue of their founder has been mysteriously stained a shocking beetroot purple. Suspicion immediately falls on one of the novices, formerly a bit of a wild child and still challengingly irreverent and eccentric, the 'How do you solve a problem like Maria?' type. The Mother Superior summons her to her office for a grilling, but the girl protests her innocence: "It wasn't me. Another nun dyed the bust!"
I have a sneaking feeling that this story may have featured at some point on The Two Ronnies, a much-loved comedy sketch show in the UK throughout the 70s and 80s.
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