Different, but the Same

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Tonight's TV: Two episodes of The Benny Hill Show from 1974.

* A couple in a hotel bed on their wedding night decide to order drinks. The woman picks up the phone and asks for "the usual".

* A seventeen minute comic version of Carmen.

* A woman swears she's a virgin. On her baby's life.

* Doctor: How are things at work?
Patient: I've been replaced by a younger man.
Doctor: Oh dear. And at home?
Patient: Replaced by a younger man.

* An old man roped to a big heavy rock carries it to a lake, intending to kill himself. He drops the rock on his foot and is so annoyed he gives up the plan.

* Nuns look like penguins. Though they're actually birds of pray.

* You know how cockatoos breed? Yes, through their noses.

Pantomimic, witty, sexist, and occasionally quite sharp. The obsessions with infidelity, frustrated lust and humiliation that most of the world still thinks Britain still has.

They may be right of course. The musical numbers are long gone, as are the stares into camera and women as passive but remote objects. The settings may now be living rooms and pubs, but there's still a combination of bawdyness and despair.

And some of the jokes are the same too.

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"Sinecure", pronounced "SIN-eh-cyur". Defined as a highly paid job with nothing to do.

Well I've got half a sinecure, because there's nothing to do.

Oh there's plenty of old coursebooks I could read, but (1) they've all be rubbish so far and (b) I can't do anything with them because there's no lessons for me to incorporate them into because I've no idea what lessons are needed because there's no students.

It's like looking at the food in your larder and trying to plan a get together without knowing who's coming or what they'll want to eat.

I could learn some more Bulgarian, but I'd forget it pretty quick because there's no one to practice it with. Not that there's anything I particularly want to say.

"Excuse me, I'm a lonely English homosexual and I haven't touched a man in over a month."..."Greetings sir and/or madam. Could you direct me to the fully functioning language school with lots of students that's around here somewhere? I'm wondering if they need a teacher."..."A old Irishman once told me that enforced inactivity causes insanity."

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Speaking of sinecures...Marilyn vos Savant. The woman who, at age ten scored 228 on a IQ test. She was dumb enough to think it meant something, but smart enough to realise other people were dumb enough to think it meant something. So she turned it into a job for life. The job being "Smartest Person in the World".

No one will ever get such a high score again. Because they changed the scoring system a few years later, and now you can't get above about 180.

I read one of her books when I was young - I'd picked up an encyclopedia of philosophy, an encyclopedia of psychology and her "Brain Building" for GBP1 each, in an introductory offer from a book club which went bankrupt immediately afterwards so I didn't have to buy anything else from them. Sometimes timing is everything.

Anyway, "Brain Building: Exercising Yourself Smart" revealed the true esoteric secrets of becoming clever. They were:

1) Don't watch so much TV
2) Read a lot of good books
3) Don't read so many bad books

...and there were others, but number (3) seemed applicable so I stopped reading.

She writes a column in Parade magazine, where her team of researchers split their time between finding logic puzzles that other people have written for her to set, and contacting experts to answer scientific questions sent in by readers.

Questions like: It is possible for a battleship to float on a gallon of water?

The answer turns out to be: If you could construct a container the exact shape of the ship but just a tiny bit larger, and have it and the ship perfectly smooth, and have the ship perfectly balanced in it's "bath", then a gallon of water would spread to be around 1000 molecules thick and the boat could sit on top of it. Provided you did this in an environment with no dust or bacteria, because they'd be large enough to tip it over.

Or as Marilyn summarises it: Yes.

There's a popular site detailing a few of the occasions when her answer is wrong.

Why won't jumping in a falling elevator save your life? According to Marylin it's because you can't jump in falling elevators. Why don't bicycles fall over? It's 'cos of spinning, somehow.

But, as I'm sure I've said before, a great way to get to the truth is to find out why the lies are wrong. Same result, but more fun and more informative.

Oh, why am I writing about this? Simple - my own half sinecure has given me time to spend most of the day reading about it.

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