Police

The British police force was founded in the 19^th Century for the purpose of crowd control at public executions and Queen-worshipping events.  Dressed in tweed and sporting a remarkably tall top hat, a policeman was a dapper addition to every street corner.  The hat was the policeman’s secret weapon, containing a periscope, a stick, a brandy flask, a pencil case, a whistle (for umpiring urchin-races) and a thinking pipe (for partaking of tobacco while puzzling over the latest daring escapade by a dashing gentleman thief).

In the early days, policemen were known as ‘bobbies’ because the standard police haircut was an attractive bob.  Their stylish look led to them being called pigs, which was an acronym for People in Glamorous Suits.  They were also known as ‘coppers’ because they could be rented at a reasonable rate of 1d for 20 minutes or 2d for an hour.  This led to another nickname, ‘peelers’, since policemen were often hired by busy housewives to help with food preparation.

The police have changed substantially since the early days.  Modern police constables carry gamma rays and can interrogate suspects through telepathy.   They are trained in a wide range of skills from victim support (‘They stole your legs! Let me get you a chair’) to kettling, which is making tea for protestors.

Jazz

(noun, pl. Jazzies)

Jazz was born in a wooden shack in Louisiana in the 1920s.  After a classical education it dropped out of university before graduating, and went on to establish itself as the most adventurous and esoteric of the musical genres.  Indeed, many Jazz* musicians aver that Jazz is not a musical genre; it is rather a state of mind, a way of being, a feeling.  They are wrong; it is a musical genre.  Nonetheless it has given rise to many great artists such as drummer Archie ‘The Artillery Section’ Leamington, trumpeter Bert ‘T.S. Eliot’ Brrzzzzyzzzczynski and controversial avant garde trombonist Lilith Jones, known as Lethal Jizzle to her frenemies. 

Jazz musicians are athletes, comparable with thoroughbred racehorses, champion boxers or the new breed of high-ranking gymnastic librarians.  Prior to a gig, a musician’s hands are warmed in heated gloves, similar to the tyre warmers used in Formula 1 motor racing.  During the gig, the musician has a team of 10-15 support staff on hand to provide a constant supply of digestive biscuits, energy drinks and ‘Jazz Cigarettes’ (cigarettes that have been injected with Jazz particles).  It is strenuous work, and following a long gig the Jazzician often recuperates curled up in a warm nest of shredded paper for up to two months.

* According to rules set down by the 14^th Combined Jazz Council and Committee for the Monitoring of Anti-Jazz Activities in 1935, Jazz must always be spelt with a capitalised J, and often with a capitalised second Z and a silent third Z in 5/6 time, thus “JazZ…z”

Ninjas

Ninjas are a species of ghost bred for the purpose of assassination and other nefarious deeds. It is said that a ninja is able to move like the cat, glide like the owl, bark like the dog and sing like the moth. No-one ever hears a ninja's approach, because he stealthily places earmuffs on the watchmen and guards as he passes by.

A ninja carries deadly weapons of stealth, such as the death star - a huge planet which can shoot other planets with a laser - or the nun-chuck, which can chuck nuns. He dresses in black, because it is flattering to the figure, and covers his face with a mask to prevent freckling.

When a ninja strikes, it is always to kill. Occasionally the victim may escape with psychological damage and bodily wounding. These are referred to as 'ninjuries'.

Wizards

Wizards are men who perform magic. They are learned in arcane and esoteric lore, and are able to perform spells in peculiar languages that you or I could not hope to understand, such as Glaswegian.

A wizard normally has a staff, because even a powerful magician requires a small team to run his back office functions. He dresses in a sort of brightly coloured poncho called a 'robe', which is decorated in astrological signs and mystical symbols such as the pentagram and the ancient sygil that means 'no smoking'. In the capacious folds of this robe are secreted wizardly items (known as 'wizquipment') such as magical tomes, spare wands, beard wax, snacks and a library card.

Wizards also wear pointy hats which are decorated with stars and moons. When set to 'soft glow' mode, these act as comforting nightlights for young wizards who are afraid to sleep in the dark.

Letters

Letters are the constituent parts of the written word, where each letter represents a different sound, such as '  ' or '  '.   The collective noun for a flock of letters is an alphabet.  There are 26 letters in common usage in written English, but in fact the full version of the English alphabet contains almost 300 letters; most of these are rarely used, being both silent and invisible.

The following, in order of appearance in Jane Austen's classic novel Men and Menstruation, are the most commonly used household letters, such as one might find in any regular coffee table book or hairdryer instruction manual:

- Bb or B flat is the silent B, which occurs in words such as 'bomb' (pronounced 'om').
- Q is an unnecessary letter, which could easily be replaced by K, but it is often said that the English like to form a Q out of politeness. 
- T is the opposite of S.   It is the most widely-used drink in the English alphabet.
- W is named ‘Double U', or ‘U2' for short, but it is in fact two Vs conjoined and is therefore worth ten.

Since a Royal Mail rule change in 2007, the price of sending a letter in the UK has varied according to the letter's size.   This means that the cost of sending a large X to an aunt in Inverness would be upwards of 92 pence.*   Pre-2007 letters are now obsolete, but one could use any found lying about the house to make alphabet soup, which should be served cold, like revenge or gazpacho.

*ie, 93 pence.

The Prodigy

The Prodigy are a man who produced a number of dance music hits in the 1990s and two thousands. Among their hits is the controversial single Smack My Biscuits.

The term 'child prodigy' is unrelated, and means an angry child who dances in tunnels and has funny hair.

Jobs

These days, nearly everyone has a job, although jobs are less popular in times of recession. A job is a method of filling the dull time between having breakfast and having dinner, unless you work a night shift in which case it fills the time between pudding and having a morning wee.

Here are some jobs that people do:

Dentists
Dentists smell of mints and have a unique number for every single tooth in the world. If they ask you to say ‘R’, be careful not to growl as it gets their hackles up.

Astronauts
Astronauts wear suits made of a special material that repels space invaders. In space, no one can eat ice cream.

Butchers
Butchers do the unpleasant job of separating meat from the animal that has kindly looked after it for the last year or two. Butchers have great vocabularies, and have invented nice words especially for bits of animals that you wouldn’t like to eat, like chitterlings, giblets and sweetbreads, because beasticles, gormenghastlies and danglepieces don’t sound very appetising.

Sailors
Sailors are really friendly, so if you see one you should say, ‘Hello sailor.’ If a sailor offers to show you his hornpipe, you should politely decline, since their mazurka is normally much better.

Beans

In the beginning, there were beans. And God said, ‘Let there be toast.’ And there was toast. Then he noticed that the beans were Worcester Sauce flavoured, and he cast them aside.

God, of course, has quite traditional tastes. Humans, on the other hand, crave culinary adventure, and in the last five thousand years we have developed more than 57 (ie, 58) varieties of bean. Most varieties are bean-shaped, though the Tyrolean Flugelbean and the South African Cauliflower Bean are more unusual, while the North American Frisbean can be a great source of entertainment at a picnic. However, only three or four beans are available in most shops, including the mung bean, the Sean bean, the well bean, and the jelly bean. If you are lucky enough to live near a ‘Beanocopia’ you will have a wide range to pick from.

Beans are the eggs of a small mammal called the haricot, and can be free range or battery-grown. These days most people prefer free range, although the nets and fine-mesh chicken wire required to prevent their escape makes them more expensive to raise than some other legumes.

Luke Skywalker

Explorer, naturalist and TV presenter

Most famous for his Ewokipaedia, Luke Skywalker wowed TV audiences for three decades with his natural history documentaries on the wildlife of Tatooine, Dagobah, and Margate.
In 1985, Skywalker experienced a surge in popularity when he took part in a charity sumo-wrestle with David Attenborough, a fellow naturist and star of The Great Escape.

Skywalker was hanged for DVD piracy in 1996.

Cuisine

Cuisine is French for kitchen, but means cooking, just as toilette is French for 'toilet', but means public convenience, and je ne sais quoi is French for 'I don't know, what is it?', but actually means kangaroo.

British cooking has changed a great deal over the last few decades. These days it is no longer considered acceptable to serve your dinner party guests a potato and some charred roadkill. As people become more interested in quality food, good nourishment and Nigella Lawson, everyone wants to develop their skills as a chief (which is French for chef). As a result, the recipe book industry is now worth literally hundreds of pounds, and not a Christmas goes by without someone buying such a book as a gift for a distant relative who they don't really know, or as an office colleague's 'Secret Santa'.

There is also a huge retail sector devoted to providing the budding chef with a variety of useful kitchen implements, at which the chef will marvel how he or she previously managed without. There are few modern kitchens that are not equipped with implements like the cheese timer, the beanometer, or the garlic laser, nor indeed specialised dining equipment like the carrot spoon, the gravy flute and the new 'Theatre of Grapes' (TM).

Superheroes

Superheroes come from America. They are like humans but have special powers, and are driven by a powerful moral code which means they always triumph in the end. Sometimes they are almost turned from the path of right and justice by a beautiful lady, who we know is secretly bad because she has dark hair.
Sometimes they have an arch enemy, who is an ugly.

Superheroes are never homosexual.

Here are some classic superheroes:

Cat Man
Cat Man comes from Chicago, where he was raised in a box by nuns. He sleeps a lot and he don't ever need no litter tray.

The Gardener
The Gardener has laser secateurs and is friends with the earthworm hoards. He charges more for weekends.

The Wastrel
The Wastrel was friends with Bill and Ted, but he was off sick when they had their excellent adventure, so he flunked school. He lives in a friend's garage and mostly hangs around in parks. He carries a spork.

Worzel Gummidge
Worzel Gummidge has very long eyelashes. He is allergic to brutalist architecture.

The Internet

The internet is made up of millions of brass pipes connecting huge underground reservoirs full of facts, ideas and nonsense. Information is pushed around the system using enormous steam-powered pumps.
Although it has been around less than a generation, the internet is now more than three times the size of Jesus. It continues to expand at the rate of two a year.

Here are most popular things people do on the internet (not counting looking at naked people):
1) finding recipes for teriyaki salmon
2) hiding
3) downloading morris dancers
4) origami
5) changing foreign currency
6) learning about bats
7) making smells
8) posting photographs of holidays in Suffolk
9) conducting séances

Noah's Ark

Until the 1840s people had believed that all life on earth had developed over millions of years through a process of natural selection. That all changed when Noah's Ark was discovered on a hillside in Denmark in May 1846.
The world was shocked. The Bible had to be re-written and evolutionary theory was overturned. Within weeks the Rolling Stones had released hit single The animals came in two by two, crazy woman and a film had been made starring Charlton Heston as Noah's wife.

The Ark was carefully excavated and soon it was realised that it contained God's DNA, which meant that it must have been Him who sank it, not an iceberg. Leonardo diCaprio fans were up in arms, calling for revenge attacks on churches and reproduction furniture shops (no-one is sure why).

But why was the Ark built in the first place?

According to the Bible (Book of Dalziel and Pascoe, ch 1-17), God had decided the world was a bit grubby. So he asked independent film-maker Noah Baumbach to load all the plants and animals into a big ship while He gave the world a wash. The rest, as they say, is a bit like history.

Noah later based his autobiographical film Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on the experience, but he left out the bit about Leonardo DiCaprio as there was no actor small enough to play him.

T' Mobile

A telecommunications company based in Yorkshire.

London

Bee Featers, black taxes, Big Bill & Ben.

London was founded by Romans on their way to the Edinburgh Fringe, where they were going to perform Up Pompeii! The Musical. After building London Bridge, St Pauls (which was originally a cinema) and Buckingham Palace they moved on, and the city went into economic decline.
The show, however, got 4 stars in The Scotsman.

By medieval times London was growing again, on the back of a boom in pointy shoes and grisly torture devices. The medieval city was full of nooks, crannies, and winding streets, and by 1666 it had become so difficult to navigate around the metropolis that it was decided to burn it down and start again.

Newly rebuilt London became the powerhouse of the British Empire, until a band of cockney architectural rebels led by Tony 'Jellied Eels' Soprano began to campaign for a repeat of the 17th Century conflagration. Teaming up with 'Knees Up, Eva Braun' Hitler and 'Arf a pahnd a pahnd' Goerring, in 1939 the rebels started a 'blitz' on old-fashioned architecture, and much of the city was laid waste. Over the succeeding decades, many areas of London were rebuilt in a futuristic style comprising massive grey cubes of concrete which smelled of wee.

Modern London is a vibrant, vigorous, vibrating city with a thriving cultural scene, based around music, theatre and ignoring people. It is said that in London you are never more than 4 feet away from an art student.
The city can be found on most regular maps, between the second fold and the picture of a Kraken.

Crime

A crime is any action that breaks the law. Crimes range from minor misdemeanours like parking one's car upside down, cheese theft or noisy breathing, to major crimes like murder or poking the Queen's corgi.

Crimes are investigated by the Police. When the Police apprehend a criminal, they often interview the miscreant using a routine known as 'good cop, bad cop and ugly cop'.
This is not the only form of criminal investigation that has its own theme music. Forensic experts normally work to a dark ambient track, while police chases on foot are generally accompanied by the Benny Hill theme.

If a criminal is convicted by a court of law, there are a number of punishments that may be ordered. Fines and prison sentences are common, but a prisoner could also be sentenced to the Cool Hand Luke egg challenge, or performing one of the 12 Labours of Hercules (except for capturing Cerberus, since the latter was destroyed in accordance with the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991).

Religion

Some people believe that we have guardian angels who fly around on magic carpets wearing bomber jackets. Other people believe that when we die, we go to a gay club in Charing Cross called Heaven. There are others who assert that if you pray loudly enough, you'll be able to hear your own voice echoing back from God's ears.
All these are forms of religious belief.

Religious belief has been a part of human culture and society ever since we invented guilt. Since then (humans being fractious creatures by nature) we have subdivided belief into separate religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Moomin. Each of these is subdivided into multiple denominations: Christians, for example, can be Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist or Sensible Jumper. Each denomination is further split into factions, and so on down the line until every individual essentially has his or her very own religion.

This is ideal, because it means you can believe what you want, and anyone who disagrees with you is at best misguided and at worst eternally damned, so you can kill them and take their stuff.

Winston Churchill

West Indian cricketer who led Britain through the dark days of World War WWII Two

Born in 1890 and educated at Kentish Town School for Girls, Winston spent the early part of her career in the army as an armoured personnel carrier. She then entered politics, running for the Conservatives, then Labour, then the BBC.

Throughout her career, he was famous for his oratory, and is still remembered for statements such as, "Never, in the whole field of human conflict, have so many owed so much, and so more done so little, about so few, and so on and so forth. So there."
Perhaps his most inspiring speech came just after Poirot was forced to abandon Belgium to the invading German forces, when Churchill's defiant voice was broadcast over the airwaves:

"We shall fight them on the beaches, in the supermarkets, near the library, in the pond and in space.
We shall fight them on trolleys and riding on pigs, with dustbin lids as our shields.
If they bring bicycle chains, we shall use a shitty stick, and perhaps a laser gun.
And we will never surrender.
Unless they are winning."

Only after the war ended did Churchill realise that Britain had been fighting the military and industrial might of Nazi Germany. He had thought that Europe was being overrun by oversized beetles.

Telephones

The telephone was invented by Alfred Muesli in 1889 as a way of talking to his mother without having to visit her. The first telephones were one-way. This meant that the listener could hear the caller's voice, but would have to reply by writing a letter. As a consequence, early telephone conversations took several weeks.

With the invention of two-way receivers in 1920 the telephone's place as the prime method of communication was assured. Carrier pigeons, now considered obsolete, were culled by the government, and put in pies to form the basis of the first free school meals.
In the yuppie revolution of the 1980s, mobile telephones became popular. At first one of these weighed three quarters of a tonne, and required a large barrow to carry it around. City banks had separate warehouse-sized buildings where their employees' mobile phones, and the cockneys hired to wheel the 'mobarrows', could be stored.

Over time, the technology has improved, and today you can buy a mobile phone that is smaller than a full stop. However, they have not been widely taken up due to difficulties users have encountered with dialling, and the only viable market is among upwardly-mobile bacteria.

Cliff Richard

(Plural: Cliff Richardses)
Singer, actor, expert jam maker

Sir Cliff first hit the music scene in 1810, when as a tiny scruffy boy of four he crawled out of a hedge in Devon singing a hymn. Since then he has sung almost 100,000 songs, which is more than anyone else in the world apart from 130-year-old Japanese club singer Tina Arena.

Having been around for so long, Cliff has seen a lot of changes in the music business. When he first started recording, he had to sing into a 10 tonne steam-powered phonograph. Nowadays, he can actually produce digital song files by singing in binary, allowing his crooning to be downloaded directly to your computer or brain.