— The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, December 22 1908
.

The SAS have killed some people in Afghanistan.

The Veneziana pizza was invented in the 1970s by Pizza Express.

In China, there’s a Monastery of Sin.

The first artificial Christmas tree wasn’t a tree at all.

Sir Isaac Newton was the last of the magicians.

The half-cock is a purely defensive stroke.

Greed was the cause of Colombo and indolence was that of Star Fort.

The word ‘robot’ is derived from the Russian for ‘to work’.

Wolves are a bit scarier than reindeers.

The average Dutchman is 6’1″.

Every child finds their father’s sneezes loud.

There are about half a dozen booksellers’ shops in Sydney.

A basic awareness of the humanities could make one a little less offensive.
.

—
For Queen Mob’s Tea House

— The Nelson Evening Mail, October 20 1906
.

‘The is cat washing dishes’ is an 18th-century expression for the reflection of water on the walls of a room.

A skate’s vagina is anatomically similar to a woman’s.

Just because a thing is true does not mean that it need have been.

A field marshal never retires.

By the time Tennessee Williams was 15 he’d lived in 16 different houses.

The code-word for the Egyptian seizure of Suez was ‘de Lesseps’.

One of the Fratellis is called Mince.

Some paper cups are five times stronger than steel.

In 1931 the Soviet Union published an erotic alphabet book to combat literacy. 

The next stop after Canterbury, heading east, is not Chatham.

Casey Affleck’s only recent cinema trip was to take his kids to brother Ben’s Batman v Superman.

Roy William Scranton’s poll has ended.

‘Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!’ is Italian for ‘Merry Christmas’.
.

—
For The Oldie

— The Nelson Evening Mail, October 4 1906
.

The beheading of the sperm whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves.

Great lips take hydration and balls.

Pease pudding has been flagged up by airport security on more than one occasion.

There is a place in China called Asbestos County.

At 35, 139, Labour MP Diane Abbott’s majority in 2017 was greater than the total number of General Election votes Nigel Farage has received in his entire career.

Zmas rushes towards us like a slavering one-eyed hell-hound.

A suspected thief in Mumbai has been fed 36 bananas in an attempt to recover stolen property.

The Celler can rock. Yes.

House, M.D. is the most popular TV show worldwide.

A young man from Torbay has, on a long boat trip to the Far East, found himself the object of the amorous intentions of a gorilla.

Richard II was a Free Brother.

The Swedish have no verb for ‘to bowl a cricket ball’.

Bognor’s ‘wrong Theresa May’ is awaiting an apology from Donald Trump.
.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, September 4 1906
.

There is a whale whose voice is too low to communicate with other whales.

Seatbelts do not statistically improve your chances of surviving a car accident.

London’s Mithraic temple is buried deep beneath the new European headquarters of Bloomberg, the financial information company.

Aeneas and Euclid are both in limbo.

The name Lezard is not a Basque name.

One human male ejaculation contains enough sperm to impregnate every fertile female in the Western world.

All traditions must start somewhere.

Bell’s whisky doesn’t make you want to drink Bell’s whisky

Daniel O’Donnell will go live on Facebook from his show in Branson, MO, today.

We have no choice but to believe in free will.

The administration of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi has charged dozens of Burmese civil-society activists under a law that restricts criticism of the government.

The nation is divided over the John Lewis Christmas ad.

Clichés are piss.
.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, March 14 1907
.

The persecution of Christians is now worse than at any time in history.

Toto’s ‘Africa’ is one of Myleene Klass’s all-time favourites.

The Hillsborough disaster is still in the news.

Simon Bolivar, a Venezuelan military and political leader, liberated Colombia.

The quern performs best when the grindstone has been pitted.

Not everything in life is a $20 jerk-job.

In the ten years of the ‘Cultural Revolution’, the Chinese population increased by 200 million.

Kevin Spacey has always been gay.

Quite a few forests have no trees to speak of.

Orlando is a thoroughly disconnected short novel by the famously unreadable and wildly overrated Virginia Woolf, whose long-suffering husband was a colonial civil servant in Ceylon.

The odds on a white Christmas have been slashed to 2/1.

Nobody ever sits in a badly-lit cellar holding the day’s newspaper for a camera without feeling fear.

Legoland Windsor is full.
.

—
For The Spectator

[30x FF]

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[PLAY]

FRASIER: ‘You can’t imagine the thrill I felt…’