This is great and, possibly, even real. The little chip-in at 1.44 ish while chatting on the mobile is sublime.

(via Chris Di Clerico)

This site rounds up a whole bunch of newspaper mistakes, corrections and odd classified ads. It's like the section in Private Eye, but funnier.

Here's my favourite from this week

I can't stand all those overly-helpful descriptions and sycophantic feedback bullshit on sites like eBay. This guy tells it like it is on Craig's List. Come get the blocks and don't fuck with me. Brilliant.

This fantastic letter was leaked to the Guardian this week. It’s Times’ journalist Giles Coren sounding-off to the sub-editing team about an “a” being removed from the last line of one of his restaurant reviews.

Very passionate and very funny. (Parental guidance – letter contains regular and excessive profanities)

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (I'm assuming Owen, but I filed to Amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on Saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.

This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.

1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentence aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on Sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,

Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.

All the best

Giles

Classic!

This is incredibly juvenile, but that doesn't make it any less funny. This photo taken at a Chinese obstetrics and gynaecology clinic kind-of tells it like it is. 

(via Chris Di Clerico).

Jim Shelly, who writes a great weekly TV column in the Daily Mirror, pulled together this very funny recipe for Linda-Barker-of-the-kitchen and everyone's favourite Shar-Pei look-a-like, Gordon Ramsay

1. Stand in front of the shiniest surface in your kitchen. Tuft up hair and apply blond highlights in the style of a pin-up from the 1980s. Footballer Frank McAvennie for example. Or Limahl.

2. Next, carve face with crevices so deep you usually only see them on programmes about the volcanic wastes of Iceland (not the supermarket). Gauge grooves into your forehead, cheeks and, most weirdly, chin, until you resemble a very worried, more muscular version of Engie Benji.

3. For no reason that is apparent, take your top off.

4. Bounce up and down outside the back door bristling with all the energy and eagerness of a dog with two dicks. Rub hands together even though it's not cold.

5. Re-enter kitchen shouting: "Fuuuuuuuck me!" and "Fucking hell!" as if you are so wounded you may be about to start crying. Scrape traces of yesterday's Sunday roast out of oven and threaten to shut down those responsible (your other half) because of the threat of food poisoning, MRSA and bubonic plague.

6. Start talking in short. Sharp. Commands. And end every sentence with the word "yes?".

7. Shout: "Come on, big boy!" and "Where's your bollocks?" to any male (or female) unfortunate enough to wander into the kitchen for a sandwich. Tell anyone who disagrees with you to go back to France - even if they're not French.

8. Declare that from now on the kitchen will only be serving cheap, simple food (soup, salmon, cheese on toast), using only local produce bought from local farms - even if you live in Croydon. Yes?

(via The Guardian)

I stumbled upon this great site, What Jeff Killed, recently. Not for the fainthearted, but original and very funny.

With two ailing 17-year-olds, spending upwards of 23 hours asleep, it reminds me of a by-gone age when cats were cats!

I hadn't appreciated the number of extremely-personal insults there are out there about Hillary Clinton. This site, alone, has five pages of jokes about the former first lady from the Letterman, Leno and the other late night shows in the US. 

My favourite, though is this one. Either someone is having some fun with photoshop or one of the Colonel's clan has a great sense of humour.

(via Katherine)

Current essential viewing on Thursday nights is The Peter Serafinowicz Show (9.30pm on BBC2). Despite sending up some rather easy targets - QVC, daytime TV etc - his material is so well observed that he's never less than thoroughly entertaining.

He's also a great actor and has surrounded himself with a strong supporting cast. Check out his quite brilliant send-up of X-Factor on the BBC 2 My Space site (Parental Guidance - barely disguised use of the C. word) or watch this spot-on parody of the vacuous L'Oriel Elvive commercials. Top stuff.

Since we moved office from Soho to Victoria, I've managed to avoid using the London Underground unless I absolutely have to. So I have largely been unaffected by the current disruption blighting so many commuters journeys to and from work.

I could, however, sympathise with the sentiments in this song written and performed by Drs. Suman Biswas and Adam Kay loosely based on the Jam's "Going Underground". Very funny, but make sure you keep the volume down or listen on headphones if you are at work. (Parental Guidance - offensive lyrics).

In less than 2 minutes Miss South Carolina inadvertently sums up everything that is wrong with the US world outlook (not to mention their education system). I don’t think she is actually using sentences, just random words as they come in to her head.

Good to know that this is helping South Africa and the other Asian countries too!

(thanks to Chris di Clerico who has a brilliant alternative take on what she should have said)

Thanks to Owen for finding this. It, quite rightly, won Holy Moly picture of the week last week.

This groom-to-be's so-called mates paid for him to be chained to a midget, dressed as a smurf, for the entire duration of his stag weekend, which meant he partied, slept and did his ablutions, all with the little blue guy in tow.

The New York Times is really trying TOO hard with the puns around this story about a former Mitsubishi executive who is suing the car firm because an ex-colleague took a picture of his penis during a booze-fueled karaoke party.

So under what circumstances IS it OK to take a picture of a co-workers penis?

The interesting comment from Mitsubishi was that;

".....at no point before he left the company did Bonomo ever file a complaint, mention it to his supervisors or call the company's anonymous tip line....."

Good to see they know who calls the anonymous tip line.

BBC 3 have pioneered some great comedy over the last few years and "Touch Me I'm Karen Taylor" is no exception. This clip was from the second show. Fabulously observed and very funny.  

I saw this on Chris de Clerico's site the other day 

This picture was taken by a KTBS helicopter flying over Lake Wiess about 90 miles north of Birmingham, Alabama That has to be a HUGE gator to have a whole deer in its mouth! Are you ready to go skiing on Lake Wiess ?! If you ski at the west end of the lake — try not to fall.

This alligator was found between Centre and Leesburg , Alabama near a house! Game wardens were forced to shoot the alligator- guess he wouldn’t cooperate…

Anita and Charlie Rogers could hear the bellowing in the night. Their neighbors had been telling them that they had seen a mammoth alligator in the waterway that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the stories as exaggerations.

“I didn’t believe it,” Charles Rogers said, but they realized the stories were, if anything, understated.

Alabama Parks and Wildlife game wardens had to shoot the beast. Joe Goff, 6′5″ tall, a game warden, walks past the 23-foot, 1-inch alligator he shot and killed in their back yard.”