Anyone got any interesting anecdotes?

You’ve been here long enough to know that the answer is No.

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In 1974 I was catching the London train from Crewe station. It was very crowded; I found myself in a last-minute rush for the one remaining seat beside a tall, good-looking man with collar-length hair, it was the seventies; buckaroo! I looked up and saw it was none other than Peter Purves, it was the height of his Blue Peter career. He said, “You jammy bastard” and quick as a flash, I replied, “Don’t be blue, Peter!” Needless to say, I had the last laugh, now fuck off!

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Horses

I once helped Paul Daniels pack his shopping. It was new years eve. He said no to doing a magic trick.

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.
Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do aclue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?

In the end I thought Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and st back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“Cookies”

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There was a field behind my cousin’s house that had horses in it and we were allowed to feed the horses some grass because the bastards couldn’t get enough of the shit. Now I’m not saying it was my parent’s fault, my auntie & uncle’s fault (not my fault of course, I was but a child), but whether I didn’t hear it or just wasn’t listening, I didn’t know about the ‘palm of the hand’ technique. Clumps of grass intertwined within my fingers as I fed the middle-parting shit what he wanted.

Hairy bastard almost took my finger clean off. Lots of blood, stitches and a mild fear of horses that would be sustained for years were the highlights of that day.

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Shat myself once

I was once in a lift when I was at Strathclyde Uni - the Jimmy Weir, for those who know of the place - and the lifts were shanky to the say the least. Also, not especially bigfor the number of the students who needed to use it.

Anyway, got in on the ground floor and another guy got in. I pressed 3 he pressed 4 (I think). The lift doors closed and then he farted. Loud. Hard. Wet. My reaction was to ignore it, but at the same time my brain said “Holy hell, that’s hilarious” and so I then spent the next five seconds trying to contain my laughter.

Then it hit me - the smell. It was warm, hard, heavy and smeared it’s self inside my nostrils. He shuffled on his feet as he noticed my involuntary deep breathing as the scent hit my nostrils, and I recoiled ever so slightly. I wondered for a second what he had ate to make such a smell.

It was then I realised he’d shat himself in the lift.

Why he didn’t go on the stairs one floor up, I don’t know. I don’t know what casued the shitting to be so abrupt. Must have been a quick little bullet of shit, but it was powerful in stench. What you don’t realise until it’s too late is that the smell of shit is easily covered by the water in a U bend in the toilet.

I got out of the lift and headed to my department, embarrassed for him.

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This is just going to be fart/ poop stories isn’t it?

I once went for a piss in the toilet of some museum I was visiting. It was quiet and I was the only one in the bathroom. Halfway through my piss, I let a massive fart go and was surprised to hear it echo around the tiled walls of the toilet. As the echo faded, I burst out laughing because it was funny, only to realise someone else had entered the toilet as my flatulence rang around the room and listened to me sniggering and giggling to myself.

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I was thinking the other day about this time last year when I was in town with the pram. I was at Piccadilly and crossing to the bus station over the tram lines when I tram tooted and was heading my way. I got on the small path between tram lines, that’s built as a path, works fine as a path, and was the only option other than being hit by trams. Some young misfit with a really Mancunian walked past me and shouted

“EE-ARRRRR, PUT THAT BABY ON A PROPER PATH”

Not the finest of anecdotes but I always find myself repeating him whenever I find myself on that little path.

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When I was a little kid (like 3 ) I had been watching Tarzan on TV (the old black and white ones with Johnny watisface). I decided I wanted to be Tarzan , so stripped off to my smalls. I also decided I needed to look “oiled up” to get the authentic look. I used washing up liquid, and when I realised my hand were a sticky mess I started wiping them on the curtains. The window cleaner saw me doing it and went and told my mum and I probably got smacked cos this was the 1970s

I have no memory of this , but my mum loves recounting the story and now you all know it too

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Aged about 12 or 13 I was out playing with my mates. We were lucky in that we grew up near lots of abandoned army buildings that hadn’t been touched since the 1960’s, some were accessible and made for great places to muck about as a kid. One such building had an open hatch in the ceiling between the ground and first floor, dying for a piss I thought that this was the perfect place to go. Unfortunately for James he thought it was the perfect time to stand underneath and look up. I pissed all over him. On his new Nike jacket. Everyone else told me I was going to be in big trouble so I ran home crying. To his credit James never mentioned it again. Also at the exact same time Rob took a shit into a carrier bag in the same room. He then slung it out of the window.

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Classic rob

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This isn’t an interesting anecdote, but guess who I just saw in a dusty, old magic shop on Clerkenwell Road at lunchtime?
Clue: It’s pretty much exactly who you would expect

lisa maffia???

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When I was wee, I lived in a house in a village that backed onto some woods. It was a time when it was quite normal for kids to be left to their own devices, so I would quite happily run around in the woods until it got dark.

Around eight or nine, my dad let us take his little axe out into the woods to make camps. We were given guidelines: only knock down trees that were already dead, always make sure the tree wouldn’t land on anyone or anything, only do this deep in the woods, any injuries were entirely our fault.

It was great. I found one area where there were lots of dead elm trees surrounded by new saplings. I diligently worked around the saplings and cleared an area where we made what was, frankly, a castle from old trees. It had a roof and what looks like turrets, but was single level because I was a bit scared about falling through the floor.

About a week after finishing it, Bigger Boys found it. They used it as their drinking den/porn stash/smoking hole. They didn’t let us back in, and worse, they pulled up a lot of the saplings.

After a fortnight, I went down there early one summer morning. I thought about knocking it down, but the holes I’d dug for supports would’ve made it way too easy for them to reconstruct.

So I burned it down. A totally natural reaction for a nine year old.

And the fire spread to cover most of the common.

There was about a day where really thick acrid smoke covered the village. It wasn’t a blazing inferno, but because the woods weren’t maintained there was a lot of leaf litter which caught fire easily and smoked like you wouldn’t believe.

The woods are still there. It’s a lot clearer nowadays, partly because of the fire getting rid of years of accumulated debris and partly because the village now has a yearly clearance of most of the woodland to prevent it happening again. I felt terrible at the time - who wouldn’t? - but apparently it’s made the woodland thicker and allowed the trees to grow quicker and better.

We didn’t play much in the woods after that.

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Jonathan Creek ?

and you went on to be a founding member of The Prodigy. Quite the life you have led Keith.

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This has really cracked me up