Humour 23 HOW TO…
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
72990 HELP THEM BEAT THE BOOZE
by Edmund and Helen Tirbutt Subtitled ‘How to Survive Life With a Problem Drinker’, this sensitive and accessible guide speaks directly to those who understand what it is like to know or love a problem drinker and who wants to help them recover. There are case studies throughout with advice based on in- depth research into alcohol addiction plus the authors’ personal
experiences. It helps us understand addiction, how to communicate with the drinker, practical steps to help him and yourself recover, little-known new methods and how to protect children and minimise the impact on their lives in the future. It is regarded as one of the most instructive and practical books available on the subject today. 231pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £4
67355 SHELVING KNOW-HOW
by Mike Lawrence
All book lovers know that we can easily run out of shelf space! There are instructions for making free- standing shelving units, cabinets, drawer kits, fitting built-in wardrobes and creating clothes organisers. For more advanced do-it-yourselfers, projects include a folding magazine rack, a white oak bookshelf and a
sloping cherry wood CD rack. 64 page paperback with colour photos. ONLY £1.25
HUMOUR
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.
- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
73096 HISTORY OF FARTING
by Dr Benjamin Bart Don’t blame the dog! There was an old doctor called Bart, who encouraged his patients to fart. He said the relief was usually brief but
terribly good for the heart. And who could forget the flatulent fiend Le Petomaine? The crafty old bugler from Rheims, would feast upon rum chocolate creams, then fart a toccata or a Mozart sonata on 17th century themes. What began as a collection of rhymes became a broader appreciation of the tuneful fart and its physiology in this A-Z of farting for all of us who have not grown up and never will. Ends with the zoo fart and the line ‘Debate still rages on whether or not birds fart.’ 160 mirthful pages, pen and ink drawings and cartoons. ONLY £4
72567 DOCTOR SEUSS & CO. GO TO WAR by André Schiffrin
Even hardcore fans may be unaware of Theodor Seuss’ previous career as the political cartoonist for PM, the wartime New York daily newspaper and one of a group of distinguished cartoonists which also included Al Hirschfield, Saul Steinberg and Arthur Szyk. This book is an astonishing treasure trove of over 300 incisive political cartoons by Dr. Seuss and 12 others, published between April 1941 and August 1945, which offers, particularly to British readers, a totally different set of perspectives of WWII, many of which we for one were barely aware. Scathing, vigorous and provocative, the cartoons come from a time when US involvement in the war was by no means a foregone conclusion, and later, when victory was by no means guaranteed. Appeasers such as Lindbergh are lampooned mercilessly, and we particularly liked the Uncle Sam bird, which bears a striking resemblance to a Star Belly Sneech, sitting contentedly on his “star-spangled fanny” as the bombs and bullets fly all around him! A fascinating picture of US wartime history, as well as being essential stuff for those who grew up with the good doctor. 280pp softback, 8¾” square format.
£15.99 NOW £7.50 73012 OLDER, WISER,
SEXIER by Bev Williams ‘As long as a woman’s flesh is clean and healthy what does it matter what shape she is?’ - Ian Fleming. ‘The best way to enjoy yourself - is very, very,
very...badly’. Growing old disgracefully has never been as much fun as in the cartoons of Bev Williams, very well known for her greetings cards artwork. Our
collection of probably over 100 cartoons raises a giggle or a smirk on every page as we watch these harlots and jezebels, naughty ladies teetering into old age. ‘I think your whole life should be in your face, and that you should be proud of that.’ - Lauren Bacall. And we particularly like ‘Good cheekbones are the brassiere of old age.’ - Barbara De Portago. Fun pithy quotes. £5.99 NOW £3
72188 HOW GREEN ARE MY WELLIES? Small Steps and Giant Leaps to Green Living with Style by Anna Shepard
The author explores everything from avocado cleansers through guerrilla gardening to worm-racing in order to perfect her art. Whether growing vegetables, throwing a clothes-swap party, concocting natural potions, or green speed-dating, she proves that being planet-friendly is surprisingly liberating and enriching. 384 pages with line drawings and Green Directory. £14.99 NOW £4.50
72086 HOW TO CLEAN ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING by Barty Phillips
Covering floors, surfaces and windows, stain removal, delicate fabrics, silver, furniture, pests and jewellery, it is an A-Z listing of everything you could wish to scrub, soak or sponge with sparkling results and not too much effort and without the need for expensive products. Wash paintwork, learn how to get rid of crayon, how to absorb dirt from fur and felt with bran or talcum powder, how to look after slate plus useful addresses and suppliers. 213pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3
72038 COLD MEAT AND HOW TO DISGUISE IT by Hunter Davies
Sub-titled A History of Advice on How to Survive Hard Times: A Hundred Years of Belt Tightening. Everyone is being urged to economise, make do and mend and avoid waste, although probably we are not laughing as we do at the tips in this volume. You might want to turn some cold scraps of meat into a succulent new dish, or knit some odd bits of string together to make a jolly useful dishcloth. 160 pages illustrated with reproductions of contemporary books, newspapers, magazines, leaflets, posters, postcards. £9.99 NOW £2.75
72104 VINEGAR: 100s of Household Uses by Maria Costantino and Gina Steer Use vinegar to look after your nails and nail polish, as hair conditioner, to alleviate dandruff, to treat varicose veins, corns and calluses, for odour control, garden furniture and home exteriors, in gardening, to keep plaster wet a little longer, to spray on wallpaper before stripping it, to remove sticky hand marks on paint, to clean windows, shower curtains, freshen your vacuum flask, stop your colours running in the wash, treat ink
72123 LYTTLETON’S BRITAIN
by Iain Pattinson
The ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ team of Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor, in the company of their esteemed chairman Humphrey Lyttelton, began recording their popular BBC Radio show in 1971. At each venue Humph would present a short history of the location, written by
Iain Pattinson, to the mutual delight of the audience, the team and their delightful scorer Samantha. We are privileged to present the very best. From Greenwich and Covent Garden to Southsea, Stoke-on-Trent and Chester, Belfast and Wales, here are great vignettes and useless information, photos and little maps. 224pp in paperback.
£7.99 NOW £4
47337 VERY RUDE JOKES by Stephen Cordwell
Much-published author and humorist Stephen Cordwell has collected here a quite brilliant selection of really filthy jokes, guaranteed to have them rolling in the aisles from Hawaii to Hanoi. Each one a cracker, and all too rude to reprint here, a great gift for the joker in your life, and plenty here too for after-dinner or best man speeches. 94pp.
ONLY £3.50
72935 A LAUGH A MINUTE
by Reader’s Digest Reader’s Digest’s well known magazine column ‘Laughter, the Best Medicine’ has appeared in every issue of the magazine for more than half a century and over the years they have published more than
100,000 jokes, quotes and funny stories from the more than 20 million people who have submitted them. Laughter can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, boost the immune system, improve brain functioning and even protect your heart which is why the average person laughs around 17 times a day. On a billboard add for a safe company: ‘If your stuff is stolen, it’s not our vault.’ There is a whole chunk in the Humour and Uniform section from Dad’s Army, timeless humour from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and onwards, fabulous colour cartoons on nearly every page, an excerpt from Blackadder 2 (the Tudor one), vignettes and stories from the office, a kid’s world, last laughs and more. More than 2,400 jokes, anecdotes, cartoons, quotes and stories. 320pp in a very large handsome hardback family volume. £24.99 NOW £6.50
72535 MRS HUDSON’S DIARIES: A View from the Landing at 221B
by Barry Cryer and Bob Cryer
A must for any Sherlock Holmes aficionado, here are the long-lost diaries of Mrs Hudson, almost unflappable landlady of Holmes and his amanuensis Doctor Watson. Interspersed with her fascinating keepsakes - letters, recipes, calling cards and photos - these writings offer an affectionate and hilarious sketch of a remarkably enterprising Victorian female. Her humorous musings recall talking to the spirit world, dancing with government officials and nights at the music hall, not to mention mysterious visitors, disappearances, and the unexplained shouts and bangs that always seem to accompany the man she initially thinks is called Shylock! 187 pages, illus. £12.99 NOW £5
spots and recipes and much more. Colour photos. 352 page softback.
£9.99 NOW £4.50
71969 GENEALOGY FOR BEGINNERS by Karin Proudfoot
Based on the Phillimore 1955 original book by Arthur J. Willis, the world of genealogical research has moved on greatly and the text of this new edition is updated for the 21st century. Covers how to begin, records of searches, using the Internet, birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns, parish registers, other parish records, wills and administration, other ecclesiastical records, the National Archive: Public Record Office, the Society of Genealogists’ Library, libraries and record offices and other resources for this absorbing hobby, a never-ending detective investigation. 126pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £4
71986 COUNTRY LIVING HANDBOOK: The
Best of the Good Life Month by Month by Diana Vowles
Garden-based activities, seasonal recipes and craft projects complement the profile of each season as it stirs into life. Readers will be able to learn how to engage in cultivating a herb garden, caring for bees, growing fresh salads, raising free-range hens, and many other activities that will keep them in touch with nature. They will also be able to cook up a storm with seasonal recipes including delicious Golden Pancakes, Rose Petal Jelly, Pumpkin Soup, Elderflower Fritters and much more. 96 paperback pages 21.5cm x 28cm. Colour photos. £7.99 NOW £2.50
71887 THE COMPANION TO LOCAL HISTORY by Stephen Friar
With over 2,000 entries, it is the most comprehensive single-volume guide ever published. In an easy-to-use A-Z format, it answers many of the questions that arise in the course of local history research. There are obscure terms that crop up in old documents - shott, scutage, escheat - and longer entries on, for example, the dissolution of the monasteries, place-names, education and genealogy. A detailed system of cross-referencing leads to subsidiary entries exploring related topics or defining specialised terms. 506 paperback, illus and addresses of major organisations. £16.99 NOW £4
71561 I NEARLY DIED LAUGHING by Tony Husband
Familiar to all Bibliophile readers for our front page cartoons Tony Husband is also a leading cartoonist for Private Eye, The Spectator, The Times, Playboy Magazine and Punch and has won 15 major awards. Here he brilliantly turns his eye for the absurd onto the battle of the sexes, status symbols, neighbours, people and their pets - dangers lurking around every suburban corner and mad everyday fantasies. See Harvey electrifying the bird bath (again), sign language in football and what looks like rather involuntary euthanasia on page 60! Introduction by Stephen Fry, 160 pages. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR. £8.99 NOW £3.50
71502 POETS RANKED BY BEARD WEIGHT by Upton Uxbridge Underwood
This classic of Edwardian esoterica is re-published here in its full and unabridged form for the first time. Of particular interest is Underwood’s most significant invention - a grading system known as the ‘Underwood Pogonometric Index’ which calculates what he calls ‘poetic gravity’ or beard weight. Beard proverbs and adages and aphorisms from such famous names as Virgil, Erasmus, beard etiquette, milestones in barbotechnology, dos and don’ts of beard adornment and some zany woodcut illus. 212pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £2
71897 CARTOONS AND CORONETS: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster
introduced and selected by James Knox In his heyday Osbert Lancaster was one of the foremost artistic personalities of his generation, renowned as a satirist, cartoonist, theatrical designer, dandy and wit. His work ranges from architectural satires, which introduced styles such as Stockbrokers’ Tudor to the critical canon, through acclaimed stage and costume designs for Covent Garden and Glyndebourne to visual parodies and jokes. His fine draughtsmanship, eye for detail and historical sense make his work truly exceptional. 224 softback pages 18.5cm x 24cm, illus in colour and b/w. £15 NOW £6
71919 SUPER FREAKONOMICS: Illustrated
71640 BEST OF PUNCH CARTOONS: 2000 Humour Classics
introduced by Helen Walasek A very British institution for over 160 years, Punch was the world’s most celebrated magazine of humour and satire, imitated, parodied and pirated but never
bettered. Like tasty plums in a pudding, here are witty cartoons from the pens of the great Leech, du Maurier, Phil May, H. M. Bateman, Pont, E. H. Shepard, Fougasse, Emett, Anton, Hoffnung, ffolkes, Thelwell, Searle, Heath, and out great friends Tony Husband and Tony Reeve. Arranged by eras 1841-1913, Through the Wars, the 60s and 70s to the 80s and Beyond covering the magazine’s most celebrated and zany themes, caricatures, the Great Exhibition of 1851, early motoring, the space race, new technology, holidays, mind doctors and Lemmings from P. G. Wodehouse to Alan Coren. First time discounted. 608 large glamorous pages, 10" x 11½”.
£30 NOW £20
70514 WHY DO FARTS SMELL LIKE ROTTEN EGGS? by Mitchell Symons
Ever wondered why we ‘knuckle down’ to tasks? Or why we can be said to be ‘happy as a clam’? Its acid green colour and cheeky illustrations ensure you are in for hours of fun facts and curious trivia - do lemmings really jump off cliffs? Why are enthusiasts called ‘buffs’? Why is Blackadder’s Baldrick known as a dogsbody? 335 pages, packed with wacky facts and entertaining illus. £7.99 NOW £3.50
71442 365 REASONS TO BE PROUD TO BE BRITISH Magical Moments in Our Great History by Richard Happer
!
Defining what it actually is to be British is futile, so Richard Happer tackles it by collecting a mixed bag of the nation’s greatest achievements, historical figures, inventions, idiotic celebrations, odd heritage, cultural eccentricities like our cuppa tea, eccentric characters (a particularly well populated category) legendary moments and life-changing events, one per day of the year. All manner of funny, shocking, stiff-upper-lip-trembling, pride-instilling and plain daft entries here. 208 sturdily bound pages.
£7.99 NOW £2.75 27150 WORDSWORTH BOOK OF HUMOROUS
QUOTATIONS edited by Connie Robertson From Oscar Wilde’s witty observation in Lady Windermere’s Fan that “I can resist everything except temptation”, to Zsa Zsa Gabor’s admission that “I know nothing about sex, because I was always married”, and by way of Woody Allen’s numerous bon mots, to the anonymous definition of psychiatry as being “the care of the id by the odd.” They will provide the reader with much to ponder long after the book has been put aside. Arranged alphabetically by author and indexed by keyword for ease of use. 256pp. Paperback. ONLY £3
71490 HUMORISTS: From Hogarth to Noel Coward by Paul Johnson
The diverse cast of legendary raconteurs includes Charlie Chaplin, Nancy Mitford, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Charles Dickens, Dr Johnson and many more. Humour is ungraspable. As W. C. Fields said: ‘We know what makes people laugh. We do not know why they laugh’. That is as true today as it was in 2900 BC in ancient Egypt, when a hieroglyph for ‘laughing’ was carved into a stone. This impressive selection includes darkest humour, broad satire, bawdy wit, biting sarcasm and much more. Have a good chuckle! 228 pages. £16.99 NOW £4.50
Edition by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics was one of the most eye-opening, humorous and downright enjoyable studies of global economics. Its unifying theme was that the old capitalist saying “people respond to incentives” is true. It went on to show how this applies equally to estate agents, bankers, crack dealers, prostitutes, a sumo wrestler and the grand high wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and marvellous stuff it was. We have here the bigger, better, more controversial, less politically correct, super- deluxe, super-illustrated second edition, which expands on many of the original points. How many more organs were donated by states without a helmet law for motorcyclists? Which diseases respond most economically to treatment and what effect does a doctors’ strike have on patient mortality? 282pp, 8½” × 10¼”. Slightly damaged pages hence price. £20 NOW £8
72078 THE ANTS ARE MY FRIENDS: A Celebration of Misheard Lyrics and Other
Linguistic Gaffes by Martin Toseland This delightful book is a celebration of those moments when words and phrases are unintentionally ‘transformationed’ into something weird and wonderful. Here are are misheard song lyrics, from which rich vein of accidental invention come such gems as ‘Deck the halls with bowels of holly’. 156 pages in paperback with line drawings.
£6.99 NOW £2.75
72215 SCIENCE WITHOUT THE BORING BITS by Ian Crofton
Subtitled Cranks, Curiosities, Crazy Experiments and Wild Speculation. Here you can read all about Soviet attempts to create an ape-human hybrid. Here are recorded in side-splitting detail Sir John Hershel’s belief in the nutritional value of sawdust, the experiment showing that the soul weighs precisely 21 grams, and the French physician who injected himself with guinea-pig testicles. These are just a few of the many colourful and amazing stories contained within the covers of this chuckle-a- minute volume. 320 pages, illus. £12.99 NOW £5
72220 SIMPSONS WORLD: The Ultimate Episode
Guide Seasons 1-20 by Matt Groening
A cromulent compendium featuring 128 new gut-busting episodes! More screen shots than ever, over 400 character profiles, every chalkboard phrase Bart has ever written, nifty new artwork, quotes
and quips from all your favourite characters, comprehensive episode synopses, stuff you must have missed, and two or more jam-packed pages devoted to every episode. In an ultimate wraparound slipcase and weighing in at a hefty 3.99 kilos, the Ultimate Episode Guide Seasons 1-20 is meant for reading, not throwing! With a place-holding ribbon, lush colour illustrations and cool features like Who Does That Voice? Couch Gags, D’ohs, Mmms, Itchy and Scratchy Filmography, Krusty Thy Name is Merchandising, Songs Sung Simpson and History of the Opening Sequence among them. 1200pp in slipcase, 25 x 22.6 x 8.4cms. £95 NOW £32
72869 101 USES FOR A DEAD MEERKAT by Massimo Fenati
Peppered with brilliant, mercilessly dark humour, here are our furry little friends becoming a chandelier, hair rollers, a TV aerial, a rolling pin, a garden ornament, an entertainment trophy, a cycle helmet, a ship’s figurehead, a place holder, a sled, and even fashioned into a pair of boots! Creepy fun and we are assured that no meerkats were harmed in the making of this book. Cartoons.
£9.99 NOW £3.75
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