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Cheer us all up - your favourite funny scene(s) in literature

106 replies

StiffyByng · 21/06/2021 13:43

Mine is Gussy Fink-Nottle giving out school prizes in Right-Ho, Jeeves.

If you recollect, sir, he had already proclaimed himself suspicious of Master Simmons's bona fides, and he now proceeded to deliver a violent verbal attack upon the young gentleman, asserting that it was impossible for him to have won the Scripture-knowledge prize without systematic cheating on an impressive scale. He went so far as to suggest that Master Simmons was well known to the police.

OP posts:
RustyBear · 25/06/2021 20:07

The rat incident from What Could Possibly Go Wrong, one of Jodi Taylor's Chronicles of St Mary's.
There has been a massive explosion in the grounds of St Mary's. Max, the training officer investigates...

"Out of corner of my eye, I could see two grubby, grey figures, Lingoss and Sykes, endeavouring to fade into the background. Of course I could. Just as I was congratulating myself that for once, none of my people could possibly be involved.
‘You two – front and centre. What happened here? And more importantly, what is the extent of your involvement?’
Lingoss shuffled her feet. ‘There was a rat and it might have been my idea.’
I set my teeth. ‘Go on.’
‘We saw a rat.’
‘Who are “we”?’
‘Mr Markham, Mr Bashford, Mr Roberts, and us. It ran into the shrubbery over there. We had to do something. They’re vermin, you know,’ she added in an explanatory tone.
‘I’m a training officer. I’m familiar with vermin.’
She pointed to the ex-shrubbery at the top of the drive, now just a series of sad stumps. ‘It ran into those bushes there. Those bushes that used to be there. We thought we’d flush it out – and any others, of course.’
Enlightenment landed as heavily as the lumps of concrete must have done. I mustered all the restraint I could find.
‘It’s the old septic tank. No one wanted the bother of digging it out so they planted the shrubbery to conceal it. You blew up the septic tank.’
‘We didn’t know that,’ said Lingoss. ‘None of us knew. Anyway, aren’t we on the mains?’
I loomed. Quite a feat when you’re as short as I am, but I was in a looming mood. ‘We are now. We weren’t then. Continue with this sorry tale.’
‘Ah. Well. If we’d known that then our actions might have been a little different. It’s not our fault we didn’t know.’
‘Can we get back to the rat?’
‘Yes. Sorry. Well, it ran into the shrubbery which we now know concealed the septic tank.’
‘Yes, we’ve covered that. Move on.’
‘Actually, we were going to shoot it but Mr Markham said that might be quite dangerous and I had a brilliant idea. We got some bottles, filled them with just the very tiniest drop of paraffin, and plugged them with an old rag.’
I groped for words. And that doesn’t happen often. ‘You what? Have you never heard of methane?’ I demanded, with all the confident knowledge of one who has experienced an exploding manure heap at first hand.
'Well, yes, obviously, but we didn’t know there was methane because no one told us about the septic tank. Really, it’s not our fault.’
I could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. ‘We’ll have signs made,’ I said nastily. ‘Go on.’
‘We made up a few more bottles …’
‘Molotov cocktails …’
‘If you like, yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Only a few.’
‘How many?’
‘Hardly any.’
‘HOW MANY?’
They stepped back. ‘Six.’
I breathed heavily.
‘We could see this bit of broken concrete over what looked like a hole in the ground and we reckoned the rat had gone down there. Mr Bashford prised it up and we tossed in the five bottles. Then we lit the sixth and tossed that in as well.’
She stopped. A born storyteller.
‘And?’
‘Nothing. Nothing happened. So Sykes and I started to leave because we’ve got exams tomorrow and we had to revise,’ she said virtuously. ‘Anyway we’d only gone about ten paces when there was this God-almighty bang and we were flying through the air. I curled into a ball because I could hear things hitting the ground around me.’
‘What things?’
‘Bloody great lumps of what we now know to have been septic tank, mostly,’ said Sykes, helpfully, ‘but some other stuff as well.’
‘What other stuff?’
‘Probably the contents of the now-known septic tank. Great flaming lumps of congealed … organic matter. Bits of burning bush. Fortunately, we were pretty well out of range. Not so the others of course.’
And what of the rat?’
‘Actually, we think the rat might have got away.’

ZittiEBuoni · 25/06/2021 20:14

In 'The Code of the Woosters' when the would-be fascist dictator Roderick Spode turns out to be a designer of women's underwear.

Jennings in one of the Jennings books getting an indecipherable letter from his aunt ('Your hatter swerved to jog my fairy melody' turns out to be 'Your letter served to jog my failing memory').

Lots of the Hitchhiker books, but the Vogon poetry was my favourite. ('Oh, freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me/As plurdled gabbleblotchits upon a lurgid bee') My schoolfriends and I were shocked when the librarian told us 'micturation' was a real word and meant 'urination' Grin.

LydiaGwilt · 25/06/2021 20:30

@JaninaDuszejko

OMG *@LydiaGwilt* I love your username so much I tried to get it but it was already taken! She is my favourite character ever.
I'm sorry I took it first, but so pleased to find another Wilkie Collins fan! He created some great villains and heroines, and so many people only seem to have read The Moonstone and The Women in White
LydiaGwilt · 25/06/2021 20:38

Has anyone else read The Eliza books by Barry Pain (written around 1900)? The narrator, husband of the long suffering Eliza, is a similar character to Mr Pooter. The first book opens like this:
"Suppose," I said to one of the junior clerks at our office the other day, "you were asked to describe yourself in a few words, could you do it?"
His answere that he could describe me in two was no answer at all. Also the two words were not a description, and were so offensive that I did not continue the conversation.....
The more I think about myself, the more - I say it in all modesty - the subject seems to grow. I should call myself many-sided, and in many respects unlike ordinary men. Take, for instance, the question of taste. Some people would hardly think it worth while to mention a little thing like taste; but I do. I am not rich, but what I have I like to have ornamental, though not loud. Only the other day the question of glass-cloths for the kitchen turne dup, and though those with th red border were threepence a dozen dearer than the plain, I ordered them without hesitation. Eliza changd them next day, contrary to my wishes and we had a few words about it, but that is not the point. The real point is that if your taste comes out in a matter of glass-cloths for the kitchen, it will also come out in antimacassars for the drawing-room and higher things.

YesToThis · 25/06/2021 22:19

Never heard of Eliza books but they sound promising - thank you

TheSockMonster · 25/06/2021 22:33

A second vote for Catch 22!

The following passage about farm subsidies is my favourite…

His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce

LeafyGreen333 · 25/06/2021 22:36

@StiffyByng

I find a remarkable number of things from Adrian’s life live inside my head as if I’d lived them myself and pop up constantly. When seeing the press coverage of Diana’s wedding dress being exhibited all I could think of was her going down the aisle in a dirty white dress kindly supporting a pensioner on her arm. Watching Motherland recently going on a school trip and remembering the trip to the British Museum broken down by ten minute intervals. Jokes about the Falkland Islands being Green for holidays and remembering them hiding under crumbs on Adrian’s map. I can never paint a wall without thinking of Noddy’s Bells. Never hear the name Charles Darwin without remembering that the Origin of Species wasn’t as good as the TV series. Pretty much any baby name discussion has me internally thinking that they need a nice modern name like Brett. Endless.

I read the two originals long before I was old enough to get most of the jokes, when a 13 year old was a figure of maturity to me, so I think every time over the years I realised how funny bits of them are, I’ve also laughed at myself for not getting the joke in the first place.

I am so glad you said this - I am exactly the same. The title of his poem "Lo the flat hills of my homeland!" pops into my head almost every day and makes me laugh. I also read the diaries when I was younger than Adrian and totally believed he was a misunderstood intellectual, it was such a treat to re-read them as I got older and discover layers of new jokes and observations - Sue Townsend truly was a genius. I am going to re-read them all immediately!
Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 26/06/2021 08:09

I'll put in another vote for Betty MacDonald, who is probably little known nowadays. US author, from Seattle - 1907-1958. She wrote several autobiographical books which I find very funny.

  • The Egg and I, about her first marriage and their time trying to run a chicken farm in upstate Washington (1927-1931)
  • Anybody Can Do Anything, about her working life in the 1930s after divorcing her first husband and moving back to her own family in Seattle with her two young daughters - it's noticeable how much less stigma she faced in the US compared with what I think would have been the case in the UK at the time
  • The Plague and I, about her time in a TB sanatorium in the late 1930s
  • Onions in the Stew, about her second marriage from 1942 onwards and life on an island in Puget Sound near Seattle. By chance my parents had Onions in the Stew when I was growing up and I read it several times. Even as a teenager myself I was amused by her depiction of her daughters' adolescent tantrums.

They're all in print, or were a few years back, anyway. Possibly even out of copyright now.

StiffyByng · 26/06/2021 08:37

Thank you, everyone! I’m sitting in public and laughing away at these.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g another Betty McDonald fan here, although the only books I still have are The Plague and I, and Onions in the Stew. Kimi in the Plague and I remains one of my favourite characters.

@LeafyGreen333 hello to another Adrian admirer! When I worked in a bookshop I spent a lot of time moving the first books out of the children’s section and into adult, but probably deprived other people of the joys of that slightly feeling of foolishness when you got the joke ten years later. Grin

OP posts:
Thunderface · 26/06/2021 08:43

I love Diary of a Nobody. I don't know anyone in real life who has read it but it's popular on Mumsnet.
I'm a big Wodehouse fan too.

MartyHart · 26/06/2021 08:53

@Thunderface it did the rounds where I used to work, nearly everyone read it.
If you can't get your colleagues to read it try buying it as a present for people. I've done that!

BalloonSlayer · 26/06/2021 09:04

Lowering the tone here but the bit in David Nobbs's Second from Last in the Sack Race when young Henry Pratt is desperately trying not to fart in class so he is clenching with all his might.

He ends up releasing a sound "that is so high pitched only dogs, bats, all twenty six boys and the teacher could hear it."

borntobequiet · 26/06/2021 09:29

This - particularly the ending where the audience gets pelted with oranges after the song

Oh, won’t you something something oranges,
My something oranges,
My something oranges;
Oh, won’t you something something something I forget,
Something something something tumty tumty yet:
Oh —

standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-g-wodehouse/jeeves-stories/text/the-metropolitan-touch

ChristmasCalamity · 26/06/2021 10:37

Oh it's been so cheering reading this thread! Gussie's speech is one of the absolute highlights of Wodehouse, and Psmith has also been my hero for the past 20 years at least.

I'll offer this from Something Fresh which I think has made me laugh more than any other scenes in Wodehouse. It's quite long so I have abridged it but I can't bear to shorten it any more so I'm assuming only Wodehouse fans will read it and enjoy!

Background: Ashe Marson and George Emerson, who are guests at Blandings, have just collided on the stairs of Blandings Castle in the middle of the night. George was carrying a tray loaded with food. Everything has been smashed and each thinking the other to be a burglar, they have started to fight in the dark. The Efficient Baxter has been keeping guard on the stairs as he (rightly) suspects Nefarious Goings On. The noise of the smashing china and subsequent fight wakes the whole castle and everyone troops to the scene; Lord Emsworth in the lead bearing his revolver to subdue the burglars.

Lord Emsworth raised his revolver and emptied it in the direction of the sound.
Extremely fortunately for him, the Efficient Baxter had not changed his all-fours attitude. This undoubtedly saved Lord Emsworth the worry of engaging a new secretary. The shots sang above Baxter's head one after the other, six in all, and found other billets than his person. They disposed themselves as follows: The first shot broke a window and whistled out into the night; the second shot hit the dinner gong and made a perfectly extraordinary noise, like the Last Trump; the third, fourth and fifth shots embedded themselves in the wall; the sixth and final shot hit a life-size picture of his lordship's grandmother in the face and improved it out of all knowledge.

Having emptied his revolver, Lord Emsworth said, "Who is there? Speak!" in rather an aggrieved tone, as though he felt he had done his part in breaking the ice, and it was now for the intruder to exert himself and bear his share of the social amenities.

The Efficient Baxter did not reply. Nothing in the world could have induced him to speak at that moment, or to make any sound whatsoever that might betray his position to a dangerous maniac who might at any instant reload his pistol and resume the fusillade. Explanations, in his opinion, could be deferred until somebody had the presence of mind to switch on the lights. He flattened himself on the carpet and hoped for better things. His cheek touched the corpse beside him; but though he winced and shuddered he made no outcry. After those six shots he was through with outcries.

A voice from above, the bishop's voice, said: "I think you have killed him, Clarence."

Another voice, that of Colonel Horace Mant, said: "Switch on those dashed lights! Why doesn't somebody? Dash it!"

The whole strength of the company began to demand light. When the lights came, it was from the other side of the hall.

They shone on a collection of semi-dressed figures, crowding the staircase; on a hall littered with china and glass; on a dented dinner gong; on an edited and improved portrait of the late Countess of Emsworth; and on the Efficient Baxter, in an overcoat and rubber-soled shoes, lying beside a cold tongue. At no great distance lay a number of other objects—a knife, a fork, some bread, salt, a corkscrew and a bottle of white wine.

Using the word in the sense of saying something coherent, the Earl of Emsworth was the first to speak. He peered down at his recumbent secretary and said:
"Baxter! My dear fellow—what the devil?"

There was a cold silence as Baxter slowly raised himself from the floor. As his eyes fell on the tongue, he started and remained gazing fixedly at it. Surprise paralyzed him.

Lord Emsworth was also looking at the tongue and he leaped to a not unreasonable conclusion. He spoke coldly and haughtily; for he was not only annoyed, like the others, at the anticlimax, but offended. He knew that he was not one of your energetic hosts who exert themselves unceasingly to supply their guests with entertainment; but there was one thing on which, as a host, he did pride himself—in the material matters of life he did his guests well; he kept an admirable table.

"My dear Baxter," he said in the tones he usually reserved for the correction of his son Freddie, "if your hunger is so great that you are unable to wait for breakfast and have to raid my larder in the middle of the night, I wish to goodness you would contrive to make less noise about it. I do not grudge you the food—help yourself when you please—but do remember that people who have not such keen appetites as yourself like to sleep during the night. A far better plan, my dear fellow, would be to have sandwiches or buns—or whatever you consider most sustaining—sent up to your bedroom."

Not even the bullets had disordered Baxter's faculties so much as this monstrous accusation. Explanations pushed and jostled one another in his fermenting brain, but he could not utter them. On every side he met gravely reproachful eyes. George Emerson was looking at him in pained disgust. Ashe Marson's face was the face of one who could never have believed this had he not seen it with his own eyes. The scrutiny of the knife-and-shoe boy was unendurable.
He stammered. Words began to proceed from him, tripping and stumbling over each other. Lord Emsworth's frigid disapproval did not relax.

"Pray do not apologize, Baxter. The desire for food is human. It is your boisterous mode of securing and conveying it that I deprecate. Let us all go to bed."

"But, Lord Emsworth——"

"To bed!" repeated his lordship firmly.

ChristmasCalamity · 26/06/2021 10:40

I've really enjoyed these. Oh won't you something something oranges Grin

How I love PG Wodehouse.

HollowTalk · 26/06/2021 10:43

@gnushoes

Arnold Bennett is great all round. I'd add anything from Cold Comfort Farm or Catch 22. Also the first sex scene from Kinflicks - involving a surprise luminous condom in a dark room
I've never heard anyone mention Kinflix before. I loved that book.
dun1urkin · 26/06/2021 10:53

My favourite book series is Aubrey/Maturin, which amongst other glories is full of Aubrey’s rubbish humour

The two weevils joke is pretty funny, it made it into the Master and Commander film, but my all time favourite is the dog watch...

From a discussion about watches aboard ship

This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches--why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?'

Why,' said Stephen, 'it is because they are curtailed of course.

borntobequiet · 26/06/2021 11:11

Thanks @dun1urkin, I’d forgotten how funny Patrick O’Brian could be. His description of Mrs Williams is like Mrs Bennet on steroids (?)
“Mrs Williams was a woman, in the natural course of things; but she was a woman so emphatically, so totally a woman, that she was almost devoid of any private character.”

pallisers · 27/06/2021 23:30

The Papers of AJ Wentworth, BA is also very funny in a gentle way.

Also I highly recommend the Math Class chapter in Seamus Deane's Reading In The Dark - just so darkly funny. The ghost story chapters are also brilliant.

Janeaustensquill · 29/06/2021 07:56

Oh what joy to discover this thread - I am weeping with laughter at Lord Emsworth and Baxter. I too love Wodehouse, Jennings, William, Adrian Mole and My Family and Other Animals. I need to reread them all.

I also remember finding Wilt by Tom Sharpe weep-inducingly funny - especially the bit when he has to confess to the police that he has wiped his bottom with the only piece of evidence that could have saved him. I’m not sure it would work as an extract because you need to have read everything up to that point for the full impact of it.

languagelover96 · 29/06/2021 08:03

I've had my laugh for the day- thanks for this thread. After reading a scary one this is what I needed really.

LunaNorth · 29/06/2021 08:24

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I'll put in another vote for Betty MacDonald, who is probably little known nowadays. US author, from Seattle - 1907-1958. She wrote several autobiographical books which I find very funny.
  • The Egg and I, about her first marriage and their time trying to run a chicken farm in upstate Washington (1927-1931)
  • Anybody Can Do Anything, about her working life in the 1930s after divorcing her first husband and moving back to her own family in Seattle with her two young daughters - it's noticeable how much less stigma she faced in the US compared with what I think would have been the case in the UK at the time
  • The Plague and I, about her time in a TB sanatorium in the late 1930s
  • Onions in the Stew, about her second marriage from 1942 onwards and life on an island in Puget Sound near Seattle. By chance my parents had Onions in the Stew when I was growing up and I read it several times. Even as a teenager myself I was amused by her depiction of her daughters' adolescent tantrums.

They're all in print, or were a few years back, anyway. Possibly even out of copyright now.

The Backlisted podcast did an episode on The Plague and I the other week!
LunaNorth · 29/06/2021 08:30

Cold Comfort Farm:

I ha' scranleted two hundred furrows come five o'clock down i' the bute.'

“It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply. Was it a complaint? If so, one might say, 'My dear, how too sickening for you!' But then, it might be a boast, in which case the correct reply would be, 'Attaboy!' or more simply, 'Come, that's capital.' Weakly she fell back on the comparatively safe remark: 'Did you?' in a bright, interested voice.“

I could probably have cut and pasted the whole book. Delicious.

LunaNorth · 29/06/2021 08:31

Wodehouse lampoons Oswald Mosley. A delight.

“ The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting "Heil, Spode!" and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”

God, he was a genius.

reprehensibleme · 29/06/2021 08:51

Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis and The Complete Molesworth by Willans and Searle.