1 A stroll in the park.
2 A woman from Australia.
3 This joke is so bad it has been entered in the Eurovision Joke Contest.
4 Working Class sketch.
5 Sleepy.
6 Dream on, baby.
7 Actually, yes. They have a “grinder.” I don’t propose going into explanations….
8 1999 novel. Part sci-fi thriller, part mock-thesis on comedy.
9 I believe the Greedy Bastard is referring to the elegant, hilarious, and unquestionably funny John Cleese. It’s glib bits of ribbing like this that gets the GB in such trouble with the U.K. press, who, ironically, seem to miss the irony.
10 “Madrigal.” Written 1965 by Eric Idle and John Cameron.
11 These words are from “Sweet Baby James.”
12 Verb, transitive. To gobsmack: to be startled or amazed.
13 In the Greedy Bastard’s opinion. But then he did write Hello, Sailor, and she only wrote Mrs. Dalloway.
14 English slang: meaning Oops, or Oh, dear.
15 Frankie Howerd, c. 1966.
16 “Finland.” Words and music by Michael Palin, from Monty Python Sings.
17 English slang. A doddle = a piece of piss; easy.
18 This has been nominated for worst old joke in a book.
19 Nominated for best recycled old joke in a book.
20 Two hundred years. Congress is another word for Intercourse.
21 As anyone with half an inch of sense knows, Madison is nowhere near Lake Huron. It is situated on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona in southern Wisconsin.
22 In other circumstances he might have said “I am a Hamburger” or “I am a Frank furter.”
23 A Peter Crabbe gag.
24 Little old ladies on Monty Python were known as “pepperpots.”
25 The Orphanage. What we called the Royal Wolverhampton School.
26 My son was very fond of Ribena, a sweetened dark grape juice drink.
27 Gorbachev won.
28 An obscure unnecessary soccer reference. Thierry Henri is an Arsenal footballer.
29 Wife. Cockney rhyming slang. Trouble and strife = wife.
30 “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” Lyrics quoted by permission of the author. Er, me.
31 Always Look on the Bright Side. Lyrics quoted again by permission of the author. [Enough already.—Ed.]
32 A rubber-chicken charity dinner.
33 Cream crackered = Knackered = Exhausted. English cockney rhyming slang.
34 The premiere episode of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre.
35 A Donald. English rhyming slang. Donald Duck = well, you work it out.
36 That’s a dog, not an Alsatian farmer.
37 Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, Morrissey…
38 Old Footlights gag stolen from Graham Garden.
39 Ars Est Celare Artem.
40 He is.