Funny Ha, Ha

by Paul Merton

  Northover bowed. Then after a pause he said:

  ‘Gentlemen, may I offer you my card. If any of the rest of you desire, at any time, to communicate with me, despite Major Brown’s view of the matter—’

  ‘I should be obliged for your card, sir,’ said the Major, in his abrupt but courteous voice. ‘Pay for chair.’

  The agent of Romance and Adventure handed his card, laughing.

  It ran, ‘P.G. Northover, B.A., C.Q.T., Adventure and Romance Agency, 14 Tanner’s Court, Fleet Street.’

  ‘What on earth is “C.Q.T.”?’ asked Rupert Grant, looking over the Major’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ returned Northover. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of the Club of Queer Trades?’

  ‘There seems to be a confounded lot of funny things we haven’t heard of,’ said the little Major reflectively. ‘What’s this one?’

  ‘The Club of Queer Trades is a society consisting exclusively of people who have invented some new and curious way of making money. I was one of the earliest members.’

  ‘You deserve to be,’ said Basil, taking up his great white hat, with a smile, and speaking for the last time that evening.

  When they had passed out the Adventure and Romance agent wore a queer smile, as he trod down the fire and locked up his desk. ‘A fine chap, that Major; when one hasn’t a touch of the poet one stands some chance of being a poem. But to think of such a clockwork little creature of all people getting into the nets of one of Grigsby’s tales,’ and he laughed out aloud in the silence.

  Just as the laugh echoed away, there came a sharp knock at the door. An owlish head, with dark moustaches, was thrust in, with deprecating and somewhat absurd inquiry.

  ‘What! Back again, Major?’ cried Northover in surprise. ‘What can I do for you?’

  The Major shuffled feverishly into the room.

  ‘It’s horribly absurd,’ he said. ‘Something must have got started in me that I never knew before. But upon my soul I feel the most desperate desire to know the end of it all.’

  ‘The end of it all?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Major. ‘“Jackals’’, and the title-deeds, and “Death to Major Brown’’.’

  The agent’s face grew grave, but his eyes were amused.

  ‘I am terribly sorry, Major,’ said he, ‘but what you ask is impossible. I don’t know any one I would sooner oblige than you; but the rules of the agency are strict. The Adventures are confidential; you are an outsider; I am not allowed to let you know an inch more than I can help. I do hope you understand—’

  ‘There is no one,’ said Brown, ‘who understands discipline better than I do. Thank you very much. Good night.’

  And the little man withdrew for the last time.

  He married Miss Jameson, the lady with the red hair and the green garments. She was an actress, employed (with many others) by the Romance Agency; and her marriage with the prim old veteran caused some stir in her languid and intellectualized set. She always replied very quietly that she had met scores of men who acted splendidly in the charades provided for them by Northover, but that she had only met one man who went down into a coal-cellar when he really thought it contained a murderer.

  The Major and she are living as happily as birds, in an absurd villa, and the former has taken to smoking. Otherwise he is unchanged—except, perhaps, there are moments when, alert and full of feminine unselfishness as the Major is by nature, he falls into a trance of abstraction. Then his wife recognizes with a concealed smile, by the blind look in his blue eyes, that he is wondering what were the title-deeds, and why he was not allowed to mention jackals. But, like so many old soldiers, Brown is religious, and believes that he will realize the rest of those purple adventures in a better world.

  SEX

  Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

  Peter Cook (1937–1995) and Dudley Moore (1935–2002) are regarded as one of the greatest comic double acts the UK has ever produced. Their characters Pete and Dud first appeared in 1964. Pete is a know-it-all would-be intellectual and Dud is his put-upon sidekick, endlessly trying to impress Pete with his knowledge. Neither has any real sense. The pair developed an unorthodox method for scripting their material, using a tape recorder to tape an ad-libbed routine that they would then have transcribed and edited.

  PETE. Come over here, will you please.

  DUD. Here, you’ve been ferreting around in my sandwich box, haven’t you?

  PETE. I certainly have, and I found something not altogether connected with sandwiches. I refer of course to Blauberger’s Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge. How do you explain this?

  DUD. I found it on the Heath, Pete, and I thought I better keep it in my sandwich tin to keep it dry until someone claimed it.

  PETE. You’re hiding it away, aren’t you, because you’re ashamed of it.

  DUD. No I’m not. I just kept it there for safe keeping.

  PETE. You shouldn’t be ashamed of sex, Dud. It’s no good hiding your sex away in a sandwich tin. Bring it out in the open.

  DUD. It’s a good book that, some good bits in it. Have you read any of it?

  PETE. Yes, I’ve been through it up to page three thousand and one.

  DUD. You’ve read the whole lot of it then, haven’t you?

  PETE. Yeah, it’s quite good.

  DUD. I like it because it tells you everything about sex from the word go.

  PETE. It’s wonderfully informative about the sexual mores throughout the ages, Dud.

  DUD. And it tells you of human sexual endeavour from the time of Adam and Eve, Pete.

  PETE. It certainly does, all the myths about it as well. Of course, Adam and Eve while they were in the Garden of Eden, they didn’t have anything to do with sex to start with, you know. When they were in Paradise, they didn’t have anything to do with sex ’cause they were wandering around naked but they didn’t know they were naked.

  DUD. I bet they did know. I mean, you’d soon know once you got caught up on the brambles.

  PETE. They had no idea – they were remarkably stupid, as well as naked. They didn’t know they were naked until up come a serpent – as some authorities have it. Up come a serpent and said, ‘Here’s an apple. Lay your teeth into that.’ Then they laid their teeth into the apple and the serpent said, ‘You’re nude, you’re completely nude.’

  DUD. Hello nudies! Course they dashed off into the brush and covered themselves with embarrassment, didn’t they?

  PETE. And mulberry leaves as well. They covered themselves altogether with this primitive clothing made of leaves, and suddenly, as soon as they became completely covered, they began to get attracted to each other, and then, of course, they tore off the mulberry leaves and it all started, the whole business.

  DUD. Well, I think once you’ve got clothes on you’re more attractive to other people. Like I think Aunt Dolly’s more attractive with her clothes on than off. So Uncle Bert says, anyway.

  PETE. Well, Aunt Dolly is really at her most attractive when she’s completely covered in wool and has a black veil over her face and, ideally, she should be in another room from you.

  DUD. Who’s your sort of ideal woman, Pete?

  PETE. Well, above all others I covet the elfin beauty, the gazelle slim elfin beauty, very slim, very slender, but all the same, still being endowed with a certain amount of...

  DUD. Busty substances.

  PETE. Yes, a kind of Audrey Hepburn with Anita Ekberg overtones is what I go for. What do you like?

  DUD. Me? The same sort of thing. Actually I like the sort of woman who throws herself on you and tears your clothes off with rancid sensuality.

  PETE. Yes, they’re quite good, aren’t they? I think you’re referring to ‘rampant sensuality’.

  DUD. Either one will do. Of course, the important thing is that they tear your clothes off.

  PETE. That’s the chief thing. I like a good rampant woman.

  DUD. I tell you a rampant woman – or rancid – or whatever you prefer. That’s Veronic
a Pilbrow. Do you remember her?

  PETE. Do I remember her? Yeah.

  DUD. She was always throwing herself on Roger Braintree, never me, though.

  PETE. Well Roger Braintree at school, he always knew more than anyone else. He was always boasting about things he knew.

  DUD. Old clever drawers, weren’t he, eh?

  PETE. You remember that time he came round behind the wooden buildings and he had, what was his name, Kenny Vare with him, and he come up and told me, ‘I’ve discovered the most disgusting word in the world. It’s so filthy that no one’s allowed to see it except bishops and nobody knows what it means. It’s the worst word in the world.’

  DUD. What was the word?

  PETE. He wouldn’t tell me. I had to give him half a pound of peppermints before he let it out. Do you know what it was?

  DUD. No.

  PETE. ‘Bastard’.

  DUD. What’s that mean, Pete?

  PETE. Well, he wouldn’t tell me. I knew it was filthy but I didn’t know how to use it. So he said the only place I could see it was down at the Town Hall in the enormous dictionary they have there – an enormous one with a whole volume to each letter. You can only get in with a medical certificate. So I went down there and sneaked in, you know, very secretively, and went up and took down from the shelf this enormous great dusty ‘B’ and opened it out and there was the word in all its horror – ‘BASTARD’.

  DUD. What was the definition, Pete?

  PETE. It said, ‘BASTARD – Child born out of wedlock.’

  DUD. Urrgh! What’s a wedlock, Pete?

  PETE. A wedlock, Dud, is a horrible thing. It’s a mixture of a steam engine and a padlock and some children are born out of them instead of through the normal channels and it’s another one of the filthiest words in the world.

  DUD. Make your hair drop out if you say it. I like looking up words in the dictionary. You know, I like going round the Valence library and going to the reference library and getting out the dictionary of unconventional English and looking up ‘BLOOMERS’.

  PETE. Yes, it’s quite a good way of spending an afternoon.

  DUD. Course I tell you what, Pete, the whole business of sex is a bit of a let-down really when you compare it with the wonderful romantic tales of a novelist who can portray sexual endeavours in so much better form, Pete.

  PETE. Well, he makes it all so perfect. In the hands of a skilled novelist, sex becomes something which can never be attained in real life. Have you read Nevil Shute?

  DUD. Very little.

  PETE. How much of Nevil Shute have you read?

  DUD. Nothing.

  PETE. Yes, well Nevil Shute is a master of sensuality. He has some wonderful erotic passages, like in ‘A Town Like Alice’ in the hardcover version, page 81. If you go down the library, it falls open at that page. It’s a description set in Australia, Dud, and there’s this ash-blonde girl, Tina.

  DUD. [Sings] Tina, don’t you be meaner…

  PETE. Shut up. And she’s there, standing on the runway, you see, of this aerodrome and it’s very hot – Australian bush heat. It’s very hot indeed and she’s standing there waiting for her rugged Aussie pilot to come – bronzed Tim Bradley – and it’s very hot. The cicadas are rubbing their legs together making that strange noise – very similar to that nasty noise which is coming from your mouth at this very moment. And it’s very hot and she’s covered in dust. The Australian dust is all over her. She’s got dust on her knees, dust on her shoulders.

  DUD. Dust on her bust, Pete.

  PETE. Dust on her bust, as you so rightly point out. Dud. And it’s very dusty and it’s very hot – hot and dusty. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the clouds open. There’s a tremendous clap of thunder and suddenly the mongoose is on her. The tropical rain storm is soaking through the frail poplin she is wearing and as the dress gets damper and damper, damper and damper, her wonderful frail form is outlined against the poplin. And then what does she hear but, in the distance, the distant buzzing of an approaching plane. She cups her ear to hear, like this.

  DUD. She cups her perfectly proportioned up-thrusting ear, Pete.

  PETE. She cups it, the plane comes down on the runway and comes to a halt and out comes the bronzed Aussie. But all the propellers are going very fast still. There’s a tremendous rushing wind and it blows up against her and it blows the damp dress right up against her and reveals, for all the world to see, her perfectly defined…

  DUD. Busty substances.

  PETE. Busty substances.

  DUD. What happened after that, Pete?

  PETE. Well, the bronzed pilot goes up to her and they walk away, and the chapter ends in three dots.

  DUD. What do those three dots mean, Pete?

  PETE. Well, in Shute’s hands, three dots can mean anything.

  DUD. How’s your father, perhaps?

  PETE. When Shute uses three dots it means, ‘Use your own imagination. Conjure the scene up yourself.’ Whenever I see three dots I feel all funny.

  DUD. That’s put me in the mood to go up to the Valence library and look up ‘BOSOM’ again.

  PETE. No, it’s no good looking up ‘BOSOM’, it only says ‘see BUST’.

  DUD. But it’s nice to read it all again.

  PETE. It gives you something to do.

  FATHER & SON

  Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

  Peter Cook (1937–1995) and Dudley Moore (1935–2002) are regarded as one of the greatest comic double acts the UK has ever produced. The pair developed an unorthodox method for scripting their material, using a tape recorder to tape an ad-libbed routine that they would then have transcribed and edited.

  [Dudley plays a working-class father. Peter plays his middle-class son.]

  DUDLEY. Is that you, Brian?

  PETER. Yes, father.

  DUDLEY. What time of night do you call this, then?

  PETER. It’s four o’clock in the morning, father.

  DUDLEY. I’ll four o’clock in the morning you, my boy. I’ve been sitting here since half past eleven wondering what’s happened to you. I’ve been sitting here, eating my heart out. I have to get up in two hours’ time.

  PETER. I know, father.

  DUDLEY. I have to get up at half past six. Where have you been?

  PETER. Father, I’m twenty-eight years old. Surely I’m old enough to go where I like, with whom I like, at what time I like. I was out with friends.

  DUDLEY. Friends? Friends? I call ’em fiends. They’re nothing but a pack of whoers.

  PETER. The word is whore, father.

  DUDLEY. You’ve become a regular little rolling stone ever since you opened that stupid little shop of yours.

  PETER. There’s nothing stupid about the boutique, father. It happens to cater for modern trends which you may be a little out of touch with, that’s all.

  DUDLEY. Well, I thank the lord I’ve lost contact with painted ties, kinky boots and PVC underwear. What sort of a bloody job is that then, eh? Well, wash my mouth out with soap and water. What I’d like to know is, what’s wrong with the drains then, eh? I’ve been down the drains all my life. My father before me, he’s been down the drains, and my grandfather before me, been down the drains. The whole family’s been down the drains for centuries. I suppose you’re too big down the drains, aren’t you?

  PETER. Father, the mere fact that our entire family tree grew in the drains is no reason why I should spend my life in a sewer.

  DUDLEY. If your mother was alive today, she’d have something to say about it. Oh, Rosie, Rosie, why did you leave me, my darling, to cope with such an ungrateful son?

  PETER. Don’t drag mother into it, please.

  DUDLEY. I can scarcely drag your poor mother into it when she’s five foot underground, can I? How did we spawn this fop? You’re all la di da, ain’t ya? You’re too clever clever for your own father now, ain’t ya? Yes, of course you’re too good for the drains. I forgot. You’re a bloody Marquis, aren’t you? Oh, wash my mouth out with soap. Look h
ere my boy, I tell you – the drains are too good for you. That’s what it is. I’ve seen better things than you floating down the drains.

  PETER. Father, I don’t know why you go on about the drains. You know perfectly well you retired at thirty-one and you haven’t been down there since.

  DUDLEY. I’ll haven’t been down there since you, my boy. Now then, Rosie, Rosie my darling. Do you see what a popinjay we have for a son? What a strutting peacock? Did I fight in the war to hear you abuse me in such a way? Eh, did I?

  PETER. I’ve no idea, father. If indeed you did fight in the war.

  DUDLEY. If indeed I did fight? I’ll if indeed I did fight you, my boy. What’s this then, eh? Tell me what this is! Tell me what that is, then! Go on?

  PETER. That’s your navel, father.

  DUDLEY. Really? That’s funny. I thought I contracted that on Dunkirk, on the beach. Crawling on my hands and knees to preserve you, eh?

  PETER. Father, if that’s a war wound, I think you’ll find I’ve got a similar one under my shirt.

  DUDLEY. I don’t want to see under your shirt. You disgust me. I’ve been a verger at St Thomas’s, Beacontree, for forty-five years, and I’ve never seen you in that place. I’ve never seen you within two yards of its portal.

  PETER. Father, I can’t help being an agnostic. I wish I had faith like you.

  DUDLEY. I’ll I wish I had faith like you you, my boy. Now then, you come in at all hours of the morning, smelling of honey and flowers and reading your poncy magazines, and mixing your Bloody Marys. I’ve got a good mind to give you a good hiding. I’ve got a good mind to take my belt off to you.

  PETER. I wouldn’t do that, father. Your trousers will fall down.

  DUDLEY. Very funny. Very amusing. Very witty. Oh yes. I wouldn’t have had that sort of cheek from you when you were a little boy. You were such a lovely little boy. My golden-haired beauty, you were. Your mother and I, we used to go along the cliffs at Westcliff, and she used to be on one side and I used to be on the other, holding your little warm wet hands. And you used to see a ship on the horizon. You used to say ‘Daddy, what’s that?’ I used to say ‘It’s a ship.’ You never ask me that anymore, do you? You don’t have to ask me anything. Do you, eh? Fancy pants. All you need to do is go strutting down the Kings Road every Saturday afternoon, showing off to your fiends. Every word you say is a stab in the back. Every gesture, every look you make is a thorn in my side.