Praise for Do Ants Have Arseholes?
Childish John Walsh, Independent
This years quirky hit Joel Ricketts, Guardian
A very funny spoof of pop-science collections Andy Miller, Daily Telegraph
Along with the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible, [the British Library also] includes Wayne Rooneys autobiography and a book called Do Ants Have Arseholes? and 101 Other Bloody Ridiculous Questions. The MPs who in 1911 established the legal deposit principle for the five greatest libraries in the British Isles probably didnt realise the full consequences of their decision Stuart Jeffries, Guardian
We all have our theories about the reasons behind the collapse of politeness, from irresponsible parenting to vulgarity on television. I confess that a blanket of gloom descends on me when I walk into reputable bookshops and see titles such as Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? or Do Ants Have Arseholes?. I cant claim that such words never pass my own lips, but I try to discourage my children from using them. I would also like to encourage them to spend time in bookshops, which ought to be treasure troves, largely free of shit and arseholes Brian Viner, Independent
[Hes absolutely right, Penelope. I always knew Mr Viner was a true liberal; for the good of our children bookshops ought to be largely free of that is, containing a small quantity of shit and arseholes. Ed]
Also by Jon Butler & Bruno Vincent
Do Ants Have Arseholes?
Learn to Speak Mafia
DO BATS HAVE BOLLOCKS?
... and 101 more utterly stupid questions
From the popular Corrections & Clarfications page of Old Git magazine
Jon Butler and
Bruno Vincent
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
Published by Hachette Digital 2008
Copyright Jon Butler and Bruno Vincent 2008
The right of Jon Butler and Bruno Vincent to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 7481 1104 6
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Grangemouth, Stirlingshire
Hachette Digital
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
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An Hachette Livre UK Company
With many thanks to Nicola Barr, Adam Strange, Andrew Hudson and the supreme Sphere sales team
CONTENTS
Editors Introduction
Welcome, bienvenue and wilkommen! As the new editor of the Old Git, a venerable magazine entering its seventeenth decade, I very much hope that this new volume of corrections and clarfications lives up to the high standard of the last anthology.
Following the resignation of my idiotic predecessor over the little matter of a missing work-experience student, a loaded blunderbuss and a substantial dry-cleaning bill for the office rug, it falls to me to navigate the good ship Git through another crude, frighteningly ill-informed collection of illiterate letters from the cretins who buy our esteemed magazine every month. [Ha ha Penelope, please dont type any of this up for the book; I just wrote it as a little giggle for you and me, to get us off on the right foot. I heard that the old editors wife rubbed cayenne pepper in his sleeping mask after reading his remarks about your bosom launching a thousand ships, but I hope we shall have a more professional relationship! Heres the real introduction:]
Welcome to the second collection of sparklingly incisive answers to burning questions that have appeared in the Old Git magazine over the last twelve months. Regular readers will already have noticed a few changes around here: our mastheads font has switched from the calligraphic type redolent of a nineteenth-century obituary, to the smoother electric-blue font more reminiscent of a neon sign outside a jazz bar or pirate bookshop. The reason? We are under new ownership. Phat Media Corp respects the values of the established brand to reflect a generation of older readers who are getting younger. So expect more features on tantric sex and dogging, cooler music reviews (acid jazz, electronica and hammond organ trance fusion), snow-boarding holidays, and articles that veer more towards exciting trends such as city shorts, happy slapping and designer pube trims.
To end on a more serious note: I can promise you that with change comes responsibility, and the debacle over last years book will not be repeated. I was as appalled as so many of you were, that our publishers saw fit to print the previous volume, Was Queen Victoria Our Greatest Monarch?, under the absurd title Do Ants Have Arseholes? a question that doesnt so much lie in the gutter looking up at the stars as do the front-crawl in a lake of excrement, looking balefully over at a rat chewing the nose off a recently deceased badger.
Of course, the legal spat which arose over the first volumes title is a matter of public record. But, with the lawyers having settled out of court (and how welcome our appointed damages were, when they arrived in the form of forty thousand copies of Do Ants Have Arseholes? and soaked up the effluent in our flooded basement admirably!), I am proud to present what our publisher assures us will be a stunning velum edition with marbled endpapers, entitled Why Are Squirrels So Ineffably Cute? Lets get this party started!
The New Editor
H as anyone ever squared the circle? Albrecht Sprengler, Zurich |
After my researches into the creation of a new colour met with muted response last year, it gives me great pride and pleasure to announce, after many months, that my attempts to find a solution to this question have paid off!
My first trials, with my daughters plastic hula hoops and a Bunsen burner proved unfruitful, messy and hazardous. However after the fire crew had left, the garage made a more rewarding sphere of scientific endeavour than her bedroom, and I moved on to elastic bands and the four-pronged plastic pieces they put in the middle of delivery pizzas. After a mere sixteen weeks of agonising trial and error, and lots of rubber burns, I can triumphantly reveal the result:
x
I hope the readers and staff at the Old Git can benefit from this breakthrough, and that it might be the beginning of a beautiful symbiotic relationship. Perhaps a regular column giving me a chance to solve further scientific conundrums of our age?
I look forward to your response with bated breath!
SIMON SAYERS, COUNTY DURHAM
P.S. My first research task could be into what exactly bated breath is what do you think?
[Ed note: Penelope, your new editor here. A note to Mr Sayers, I think, letting him down gently. How gratifying that our column inspires such enthusiasm, even if it is occasionally a tad wayward. By the way, this is by far the strangest office Ive ever worked in. Could you ask the cleaning girl Consuela, is it? to scrape that pebble-dash effect off the wall near the door. Im sure theyre limpets. Theres an unhealthy level of moisture in the whole room.]
