Leigh - Epic fail: the ultimate book of blunders

CONTENTS

Failure can be caused by many things bad luck, stupidity or a basic failure to grasp the laws of gravity. One thing is certain though: when it happens to other people, its painfully, wickedly funny.

Epic Fail is packed with those hilarious, cringeworthy moments, including:

• The terrorist who didnt payenough postage and had his parcel bomb returned to sender
• The thief who pickpocketed a top international sprinter
• The health authority who launched a Better Health campaign showing the cardiogram of a dead person
• The hundreds of men who responded to an ad for a penis enlarger, only to be sent a magnifying glass.

Mistakes, mishaps and the worlds biggest balls-ups Youll find them all here in Epic Fail.

Mark Leigh is superbly qualified to write this book, having failed miserably in his quest to marry a lingerie model, invent a machine that turns earwax into gold or discover a cure for male pattern baldness. His accomplishments however include writing or co-writing forty-five humour titles on subjects as diverse as celebrities, extra-terrestrials, swearing pets and toilets, as well as a comedy novel Dick Longg: Sexual Saviour of the Universe! (available on Kindle). Mark lives in Surrey with his family and when hes not writing or failing, works in marketing and plays bass in his death metal group Blunt Force Trauma.

For more details visit www.mark-leigh.com

Sometimes failure isnt an opportunity
in disguise, its just you.
DOUG COUPLAND

If at first you dont succeed, failure might be your style.

QUENTIN CRISP

Theres nothing that quite tickles the funny bone like the proverbial banana slip. Seeing people fall on their arse carries the sort of guilty amusement that sees us both sniggering and secretly thinking thank God it wasnt me.

Some might try to dignify these epic fails by claiming theyre the path to glory or that theres a sense of nobility about them. Bullshit! Theres nothing heroic or glorious about failing just ask the guy who attempted to recreate that scene from American Pie and landed himself in a burns unit From the hundreds of examples in this book, its clear that failure isnt a speed bump on the road to success; its embarrassing, humiliating and nearly always results in abject shame or serious bodily harm.

Whether its lifes way of telling you youre in the shallow end of the gene pool or its just plain bad luck, failure in ourselves is depressing, but in others it never fails to amuse.

So sit back, kick off your shoes and enjoy this compilation of epic fails, including the courthouse that used a Danielle Steele romance instead of the Bible to swear oaths, and the terrorist who failed to put enough postage on his letter bomb, thus ensuring it came back to him marked Return to sender

Mistakes, mishaps and the worlds biggest balls-ups Youll find them all here in Epic Fail.

Mark Leigh, 2013

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

Ever since Eve thought listening to a talking snake was a good idea, humans have suffered epic lapses of judgement. History may be written by the victors, but luckily for us, the victors take great satisfaction in writing about the losers

King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden wanted his navy to have the worlds largest warship, and so in 1626 construction began on the Vasa. Two years later the 226-foot-long vessel set sail on its maiden voyage from Stockholm carrying 145 sailors, 300 soldiers and 64 guns. Within ten minutes it had keeled over, filled with water and sank.

The death of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, the event that precipitated the First World War, can be put down to his vanity. Rather than allow any wrinkles to be visible in his uniform, he was sewn into his military tunic. After he was shot alongside his wife in Sarajevo in June 1914, those coming to his rescue were unable to reach his wounds, as they couldnt locate any buttons on his uniform. By the time they managed to cut him out of his clothes he was dead.

Adolf Hitler took sleeping pills on the night of 5 June 1944 and gave instructions that he was not to be woken under any circumstances. At dawn the next day Allied forces landed on the Normandy coast and the D-Day invasion began. Field Marshal von Rundstedt ordered two Panzer divisions to head to the region but was told to stand down by the German command in Berlin until he received direct orders from the Fhrer himself. Hitler didnt wake up until midday by which time the Allies had established their positions and were beginning to advance.

In 1915 the Mexican revolutionary lieutenant Rodolfo Fierro was marching with Pancho Villas troops towards the town of Sonora when he decided to take a shortcut. His horse was spooked en route and threw Fierro from its saddle into quicksand. Weighed down by the sizeable amount of looted gold coins he was carrying, Fierro slowly sank to his death.

Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI, were captured trying to leave Paris during the French Revolution as they changed horses at the town of Varennes in 1791. Although dressed as commoners, Mme Antoinette had forgotten one part of her disguise: she was still wearing her pungent Houbigant perfume a smell far too rich for any of the lower classes to be wearing. Captured, they were forced to remain in the city until their eventual executions in 1793.

The composer Irving Berlin had a huge hit with White Christmas, written in 1940. It became something of a morale-boosting song for Allied troops, and eventually led him to visit Great Britain. One of Winston Churchills aides mentioned that Mr Berlin was in the country and the prime minister immediately asked him to set up a special reception for the great man.

Irving Berlin was honoured and amazed when he found himself actually sitting next to Churchill at the lunch. Throughout the meal Churchill kept probing him about the war and what he would do if he were in the PMs shoes.

Berlin felt out of his depth he was a composer, not a politician or a military strategist, and all he could offer were short, glib, noncommittal answers. After the lunch and the goodbyes Churchill turned to his wife and commented on how thoughtful his special guest was, so unassuming and lacking in pomposity, considering he was one of the worlds leading thinkers Churchill thought hed invited Isaiah Berlin, the great philosopher.