Herbert

So, you've all been wondering where our faithful sidekick Herbert has been these last few days and posts, and because you've all been wondering, I'll tell you.

He's been teaching in Scandinavia. You may remember that up there in the darker parts there is a small tribe of large necked geese, which are named after him.

He recently had to go and preside over a disciplinary action for one of the younger geese who had got it into his beak that it was OK for him to date a swanlet.

Unfortunately for him the Herbertians operate a strictly goose-on-goose policy concerning relationships. This obviously scuppered his chances of 'making it' with said swanlet, and thats a shame as he'd just started to learn a ballet by Tchaikovsky to impress her.

Whilst Herbert was up there in the dark land he took time to fill them in on some of his newer philosophies which he had recently been working on, a lot of them seemingly coming during his frequent midnight iced-cream and sci-fi binges. I'm getting worried for that giraffe. If he watches Total Recall one more time I might have to call the RSPCA and see if anything can be done.

'Hello, Battersea Giraffes Home.'

'Yes, hello. I have a small problem with my giraffe - Herbert - and I was wondering if you could help me?'

'Well, we can certainly try sir. What seems to be the problem?'

'He's... well, recently he seems to have changed behavioural patterns quite a bit. Just doing things that he wasn't doing before, staying up late, that kind of thing.'

'Ah yes, it sounds like he's entering what we like to call the 'midnight' phase. You might find that he goes through quite a lot of 'Cookie dough' ice cream and develops a sudden inexplicable interest for the back catalogue of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Its really quite normal.'

'Oh, ok. What about a sudden socialist bent in his politics, is that a normal thing?'

'What are you? Some kind of nut job!? Get off the phone now, you freak!'

Yeah, that would go really well.

One of the pastimes I sometimes engage in when I'm bored and need cheering is to answer the phone in more and more whimsical ways.

Think about it for a second, if I answer the phone to you 'Hello' you know things are normal, and the conversation could be dull, our lives dull, and dullness will continue.

If I answer the phone (at 10AM) 'Good evening Windsor castle - corgis for hire' you begin to get intrigued. You wonder if it is always evening in Windsor castle (yes) if they do hire corgis out (yes) to anyone who calls (not really) and how I manage to get a paragraph of text out of such nonsense.

Its a gift.

One of my favourite examples of this really working was me answering the phone thus;

'McHelloooo!'

The Scottish lady on the other end of the phone laughs and replies 'How did you know it was me?'

'I didn't.'

I'm sure you'll join with me in admiring the sheer class of that situation.

Speaking of class, its time for me to reveal another of my (not) award winning musical jokes, this one based on a Kylie Minogue song - 'I just can't get you out of my head'.

I just can't get you out of my shed
Boy your lawn is all that I think about.

Trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel.
Trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel, trowel!

One reviewer said of my musical jokes 'I wish I could ... write like him. They're so ... funny and seem so effortless. Its almost like he isn't trying. Sometimes ... I sit ... and ... read them ... and laugh for hours.'

Ok so, I just made that up, but it could have been said, certainly bits of it could.

Recently, my boss has introduced me to something which I now call 'Dan's double drat scale'. It consists of making a perfectly acceptable exclamation of annoyance - for example 'bottoms' and then multiplying it logarithmically.

As a for instance, the above 'bottoms' because 'oh, bottoms to the power of ten!'

This is much more effective at conveying the annoyance and can keep a conversation going where the event that caused the exclamation may have killed it. I shall now leave you with a few of the best examples I can think of in the next 1 minute.

'Poo, pants, knickers to the power of poo, pants knickers.'

'Disproportionate buttocks times seven.'

'Oh, mongs cubed!'

'Fail x Fail.'

'Spastic cow noises divided by the square root of an irrational number!'