Christmas funny books
Stocking fillers
There is no ambiguity about the next two books under review: ‘Mission Accomplished’: Things Politicians Wish They Hadn’t Said by Matthew Parris and Phil Mason (J R Books, £12.99) and Mardy Grothe’s Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History’s Great Wits and Wordsmiths (also J R Books, £12.99). They are both out to make you chuckle, and both succeed. I found I knew about half the quotations in each already. The trouble is, the half I don’t know may be the half you do know — in which case, apologies for pressing on you the examples which follow.
Readers of this magazine don’t need to be told who Matthew Parris is, but they might need to know that his co-compiler Phil Mason ‘graduated from the LSE and works in the Civil Service’. Here are a few of the lulus the two men have garnered.
How nice to see you all here.
(Roy Jenkins, addressing prisoners on a visit to a London jail).
Ah, I must have been reading it upside down. I thought it was 81, which did seem most unfair.
(Unidentified bishop in the House of Lords, asked if he would support the 18 compromise in the coming debate on the age of homosexual consent, 1994).
How on earth do the birds know it is a sanctuary?
(Conservative MP Sir Keith Joseph, visiting a bird sanctuary).
Of course we are not patronising women. We are just going to explain to them in words of one syllable what it is all about.
(Lady Olga Maitland, founder of Women for Peace and a Conservative MP).
This is anarchy gone mad.
(Unidentified union official, complaining that action by another union had been taken without consultation, during the Winter of Discontent, 1979).
Where would Christianity be if Jesus had got eight to 15 years with time off for good behaviour?
(James Donovan, New York senator, supporting capital punishment, 1975).
A pissometer?
(Prince Philip, at the top of his voice, visiting a winery in New South Wales, being shown a piezometer, a device measuring water depth in soil, March 2000).
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