Whether you love a good pun or they simply make you groan, they’re part of the fabric of British comedy.
We’re firmly in the pro-pun camp, even if it can prove a little in-tents.
Here, UK Pun Champion Richard Pulsford, aka The Punball Wizard, takes an irreverent look at the major stories grabbing the headlines.
UK politics
The Conservative Party, sorry, The Conservative Work Event, continues to ride out the Partygate storm. The PM has shaken up the Downing Street operation by ensuring the garden, previously used for so many gatherings without being cleared up afterwards, is now covered by one huge canape.
- On a lunchtime visit to the Carlsberg factory, Boris Johnson offered to add lager to the journalists’ broth but the bosses insisted he couldn’t ruin a pea soup in a brewery.
- The PM gave Jacob Rees-Mogg the new role of “Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency”. Apparently he wasn’t allowed to become Secretary of State for the Environment as his name sounds too much like re-smog.
The royals
Prince Andrew has settled a civil sexual assault case brought against him in the US by Virginia Giuffre. The Duke and Ms Giuffre reached an out-of-court settlement and he will pay an undisclosed sum. Andrew had already lost his Royal titles and patronages but is going to keep the title “Duke of Hazard”.
- The Queen wants Camilla to take charge of organising her collection of sea shells when she dies and hopes people will see her as the Queen Conch Sort.
The cost of living
In our house we were worried we couldn’t afford our electricity bill, but instead of disconnecting us npower offered a simple solution, and now we’re de-lighted.
Wine
With news that just two glasses of wine are enough to bring you up to your daily sugar limit, I’d like to point out that I don’t drink high-end plonk. My wine rack is held together with cellar tape.
Another wine-related thing I learned this week is that there is an EU body that oversees the fortifying of drinks with German wine. It’s an add hock committee.
Bones
A human femur was found in the River Thames by Simon Hunt, who was taking his name rather too seriously. Experts say the bone is about 5,500 years old and belonged to a person who was about 5ft 7in tall. So if Keith Richards ever needs a new hip then archaeologists have something more modern they can offer him.
Trees
I read that more than eight million trees have been lost to storm damage this winter. At first I thought, “You can’t palm me off, I’m not falling fir that one”, until I realised it was true. Well wood you believe it? It’s not good, that’s plane to see. In fact it’s such a horror show they could make it into a Tim-ber-ton film.
I once tried scanning a book of tree poems at the supermarket self-checkout but it didn’t like the bark ode. I guess it must have been an unexpected xylem in the bagging area.
Some people have no regard for nature. Like the time I was visiting a graveyard in Paris and I saw a couple hang their raincoats on a tree. I thought, that’s mac arbre.
Sport
Kurt Zouma’s neighbour has naturally been worried about the safety of their cat. Zouma said it was fine because he was actually afraid of the cat, given it looked a bit vicious. So the neighbour suggested he just try giving it a stroke. Well, it took a few weeks, but after making it smoke a lot of cigarettes, it finally had one.
The Ukraine crisis
Russia has been playing a high stakes gamble with 150,000 troops poised to invade Ukraine at the drop of a ushanka. It’s almost as if they want to bankrupt their economy with people in the capital heard shouting: “Russia is having a closing down sale. Everything Moscow.”
Labour MP Diane Abbott took a different stance to almost every other British politician by claiming that Russia had a point about NATO expansion, effectively meeting Ukrainian complaints with “Crimea river”.