This piece on a British pun contest was interesting. Few of the puns were all that good, and quite a few of them weren't even puns per se but one-liners.
The joke about stealing an anti-bullying wristband from "a short, fat ginger kid" isn't a pun at all. It also didn't make sense to an American, since I had to go Googling to find that ginger is one of those Cockney rhyming slang things, like where we get the Bronx Cheer synonym raspberry from raspberry tart rhyming with fart. Ginger flows from ginger beer which rhymes with agaybasherwewillnotusehere.
Also, stone for 16 pounds is an Englishism that is not in the typical American vocabulary. So describing a pair of anorexic ladies as "two birds, one stone" is not PC to say the least but is a fighting shot at good pun. A jab at Vanessa Feltz, an obscure (from this side of the pond) BBC announcer, isn't going to translate well, nor did writing a number on a wooden spoon and walking into a pub; the later must be part of pub culture that I am clueless of.
The joke about stealing an anti-bullying wristband from "a short, fat ginger kid" isn't a pun at all. It also didn't make sense to an American, since I had to go Googling to find that ginger is one of those Cockney rhyming slang things, like where we get the Bronx Cheer synonym raspberry from raspberry tart rhyming with fart. Ginger flows from ginger beer which rhymes with agaybasherwewillnotusehere.
Also, stone for 16 pounds is an Englishism that is not in the typical American vocabulary. So describing a pair of anorexic ladies as "two birds, one stone" is not PC to say the least but is a fighting shot at good pun. A jab at Vanessa Feltz, an obscure (from this side of the pond) BBC announcer, isn't going to translate well, nor did writing a number on a wooden spoon and walking into a pub; the later must be part of pub culture that I am clueless of.
The prize wasn't for puns, Mark. It was for one-liners at the Edinburgh Fringe. I think you've misunderstood 'ginger'. That hasn't anything to do with rhyming slang. It simply refers to the hair colour. 'Ginger' kids are often a target for playground bullying. I can explain the wooden spoon thing. In many British pubs, if you order food you'll be given a spoon with a number on it to identify your order. It wasn't a great joke to begin with, and the explanation makes it no funnier!
Posted by: Richard Hall | August 24, 2010 at 06:55 AM
The link headline had "pun" in it, so I might have been lead astray from that.
I Googled for Ginger as British slang and it seemed to point more towards an anti-gay pejoritive than the hair color, or at least using such a slur as a slam against any wimpy kid you don't like.
The spoons I probably could have figured out, since US restaurants often do that except with plastic triangles.
Quick update-Here's a fun irony; when I posted this comment, the spambot-catcher code started with BBC.
Posted by: Mark Byron | August 24, 2010 at 10:33 AM
I've never known ginger used as an anti-gay pejorative, but I'm not very 'with it'. I'll ask my daughter. In similar vein, I'm bothered by the way that 'gay' has come to be used as a general put-down by the kids here. Has that happened in the States too?
Posted by: Richard Hall | August 25, 2010 at 02:36 AM