I met with old ‘Porky’ Patterson the other day at the Club. Marvelous chap ‘Porky’, worked for the Home office for years. Sometimes, after a few to many ports at the Club, he lets slip some long buried government secrets. His latest revelation was that in 1847, a team of intrepid Pygmies from the Congo made the first successful assent of Everest. Their leader, Wo-no Bug fakker was reported as saying ‘It was good’. Unfortunately, the wider public was never to know about this heroic effort, as prejudice against the vertically challenged was at a height at this time. Good Queen Victoria, being of slight build herself, tried to bring the story to light but a bill was passed in Parliament outlawing any mention of the fact. Coincidentally, the same bill decreed that people under 5′5” would always be served last at bars.

I have never really had much of an interest in active sports, too much good food and port have seen to that. I do, however, enjoy watching some of the more unusual sports. One such sport is known as ‘Punkin Chukin’ and is practised by some of our poorer, more backward American cousins. The world record distance for hurling a pumpkin was set by an air cannon called Aludium Q-36 Pumpkin Modulator in 2001 at the Morton Pumpkin Festival, Illinois. The 36,000-pound cannon constructed by Brad Livek has a barrel 80 feet long and fired a 10 pound pumpkin 4,860 feet.

The cult of celebrity has reached such epic levels nowadays that people are even being payed to impersonate these, so called, ’stars’. I would offer one cautionary note to those who wish to pursue this as a career; Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

It’s an odd fact, and a quite pointless one, that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why.

Earlier this year, Britain’s Ann Summers sex-product company announced it would stop selling its remote-controlled Love Bug 2 personal vibrator in Cyprus after Cypriot military officials complained that the device’s signals were interfering with army radio transmissions.

My good lady wife is still as sprightly as the day I met her. One of her favourite hobbies is cycling which she insists keeps her young. As she pointed out to me the other day; 43% of women over 70 admit to having orgasms whilst riding bicycles.