This Week's Spam

'Tis The Season To Be Drunk

It's Christmas party time!! Why don't you get together with a load of mates and go on  a newsagent-crawl, buying several rounds of this week's Venue magazine in each one? Well why don't you? Eh? It's got:

Drink- With a stonking £10 in expenses, our team of investigative boozehounds really suffered on your behalf, going on out five festive pub-crawls. Wherever you live, wherever you work, we've got it all mapped out - pub snacks and everything. First one's on us...

New Year's Eve - We've got the definitive, pain-free NYE planner full of the best menus, parties and club nights in town. And not a pre-recorded Jools Bloody Holland hootenanny in sight.

PLUS - Your chance to win Christmas! ... New exhibition of Bristol in the 80s ... Radio jock and funny doctor Phil Hammond ... Ardal 'Father Dougal' O'Hanlon ... Bath novelist Sarah Duncan ... the West's best Italian restaurants ... Job ads ... And loads more, including your complete ten-day local entertainment guide.

* Or subscribe for only £4.99 a month! More details here: http://www.venue.co.uk/subs/index.html

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Willy out!

I stood for parliament in 1992 , contesting William Waldegrave's seat in Bristol West. I was in a double act then with Tony Gardener called Struck Off And Die and we were the Struck Off And Die Junior Doctors Alliance or Sod Ya for short. We were campaigning mainly about junior doctors' hours, and we hired an ice-cream van and drove it around the streets of Bristol West, campaigning against Waldegrave, shouting, "What do we want? Willy out! When do we want it? Now! Willy, willy, willy, out, out, out!" I think we got 87 votes, which isn't quite a mandate to govern.

I once did a show called '28 minutes to save the NHS' - it started off as a radio show, which was 28 minutes, then sort of expanded - and since I did that, Labour put a huge amount of money into the NHS. Probably because of my tour actually, because they thought, "Shit, there's a comedian gagging about how there's not enough money in the NHS, we'd better put some in there."

- Rude comedy Doctor and radio presenter Phil Hammond, interviewed this issue.

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Buy? Humbug!

Anyway, the stuff (and this is undoubtedly the best word to describe it) on offer at Christmas Markets beggars belief. I don't want to name names, but fairtrade flower tealights? Rapeseed oil? Traditional Moroccan lanterns? Who buys this stuff?
I'll tell you who: my sodding girlfriend. She's the reason I've been dragged to Bath's annual rip-off fest so many times. She's the one who walks around saying "Oh cute!" whenever she sees anything more exciting than a puddle. And she's the one - get this - who's going on holiday to Bruges... solely because of the city's Christmas Market. She's actually going abroad to be ripped off by people sitting in wooden sheds. She enjoys it that much.

- Harry Byford on Christmas markets, in this issue

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A Quick Word...

If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?
A harem in Istanbul at the height of the Ottoman Empire. I like those shoes with the curly toes.

What are you scared of?
Bees, identical twins, twin bees, eternal damnation. I don't mind the damnation; it's the eternity that bothers me. I find it hard to fill a whole morning.

What do you most like about yourself?
The fact that I'm always right about everything.

Have you ever stared death in the face?
We have a staring match every night.

- Irish funnyman Ardal O'Hanlon, interviewed this issue.

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Jokes

The Lord of the Manor called his butler and said, "What about running my bath Wibble."

"Certainly, will there be anything else my lord?" said Wibble.

"Yes Wibble, what about my dressing gown."

"Certainly, will there be anything else my lord?"

"Yes Wibble, what about my carpet slippers."

"Certainly, will there be anything else my lord?"

"No Wibble, If I require anything else I shall call you."

The old Lord lowers himself into the water, and lets go a long fart. Five minutes later, Wibble returns with a hot water bottle on a silver tray.

"Here you are my Lord, your hot water bottle," says Wibble.

"I never asked for that," said his Lordship.

To which Wibble replied, "You did my Lord, as you lowered yourself into the bath, I distinctly heard you say, 'Whadabowdawadderboddlewibble.'"
(Thanks Jack)

An elderly lady goes to the dentist. "Good morning," he says, "And how are the teeth today?"

"I need you to extract some of them."

"Really?" says the dentist. "Well normally I only do extractions as a last resort, even for senior citizens like yourself. Get onto the chair and let me examine you."

The woman sits on the chair, pulls up her skirt and pulls down her knickers and lifts her legs up.

The dentist is shocked. "Madam," he says, "I am a dentist, not a gynaecologist!"

"I know," she says. "I want you to extract my husband's teeth."
(Thanks Norm)

A woman was visiting Manchester on a business trip. It was raining when her train pulled in. She checked into a hotel. It rained all day that first day. When the woman got up the next morning, it was still raining. The rain continued for several more days.

Leaning out her hotel window one day, she yells at a boy who is out on some waste ground playing in the rain. She calls out to him, "Does it ever stop raining around here?"

"How should I know?" the boy calls back. "I'm only eight years old!"
(Thanks Benn0, you win this week's star prize. Mail us a postal address and we'll sort you some CDs.)

Please send us jokes. Best one each week wins some stuff. Don't delay - email editor@venue.co.uk  now and and rub the lard of your funnyness all over our pouting inbox.

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Websites

Amazing polar pics http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2009/11/2673

The Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody (below)

That Matrix slow motion bullets thing, done with Lego (below)

What woodworms sound like http://zimoun.ch/works/organic_works/2009_woodworms1/woodworms1_mov.html

Abandoned Soviet military lab http://brusnichka.com/2007/11/15/laboratory-of-studying-a-human-brain/?page=16

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Competitions

Win!!!

This week's Venue offers you the chance to win Christmas! We've got a whole load of totally fab Christmas-y prizes to give away that will keep you warm, fed, boozed and entertained right throughout the Yuletide season: aren't we great?

There's: Tickets to see 'The Red Shoes' at the Watershed; a panettone Italian celebratory Christmas cake; tickets to see Ardal O'Hanlon, Phil Kay, Mark Olver and Craig Campbell at St George's; a gift pack of Bath Ales' Festivity beer; Lahloo tea-infused chocolates; T-shirts from Beast boasting new slogans, including the immortal: "Muh!! I wants a go on the slider!"; recipe books; 24 bottles of Corona beer aaannnnd... a scrummy organic box of goodies  from the  Better Food Company. But to be in with a chance of bagging all this seasonal loveliness, you're going to have to buy this week's Venue.

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Say What?

Hi, Honey, I'm ho... Oh Christ, what's going on?
Hi, dear. Sorry about the mess. The living room is my workshop for the next few days. Weeks. I've moved the TV into the downstairs toilet so you won't miss 'Casualty' or 'Wife Swap' or anything.

Workshop? What are all these bits of bicycle? Where did you get them from?
Freecycle. It's a marvellous thing. People give you their old crap for free. I got everything from Freecycle. Apart from the rockets.

Rockets!?
Yeah, exciting, isn't it? Although they're only big firework rockets. I'd prefer a hydrogen peroxide rocket-assisted take-off unit, or an axial-flow gas turbine, but there weren't any of them on the Bristol Freecycle group.

You're mucking about with explosives in our living room?
I'm not 100% sure yet. Using rockets, jets or a RATO unit might be regarded as cheating. I'm toying with the idea of some sort of catapult. You know - like they have on aircraft carriers. I wonder if they have any old aircraft carriers on Bristol Freecycle?

What the hell are you doing?
I am building the world's fastest bicycle.

Yes, of course, you are. Why?
Because the world's fastest car is being built right here in Bristol. Engineers from UWE and their partners in Bristol City Council and the ss Great Britain Trust have won funding for the project, which will be based near Brunel's pioneering ship. The Bloodhound SSC (Supersonic Car) will travel at over 1,000mph.

Isn't that breaking the speed limit?
I expect they'll only take her out on special occasions. Maybe they'll shut Park Street and Whiteladies Road or something. The point is to inspire new generations of young engineers.

So your bicycle will go at 1,000 miles an hour and inspire future generations?
Yup. Bristol is supposed to be a Cycling City, and they've got all this money which as far as I can see they've only spent so far on bureaucrats and little stretches of cycle path that go nowhere. I shall present my blueprints for the Red Streak Supersonic Bike to the council and ask for a grant.

Aren't you forgetting that the council are about to bring in 20mph speed limits in loads of roads to make life safer for cyclists?
My dear, this is a bicycle. Only a loser rides a bicycle on the roads in Bristol when there are pavements available.

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Subscribe

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Please remember...

And please remember to buy Venue. If you do, the management have promised to let one of us in to watch their frugal 15-course Christmas meal that isn't as big as last year's because of the recession. 

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Cheers then.
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