Phileas Fogg was relaxing at the bar in his local gentleman's club with a glass of brandy and a copy of the Times.
"Hello Fogg," said Lord Cockwrench. "Have you just laid a honking great brown egg in the lavatory?"
"I dare say I have," replied Fogg sadly. "I do beg your pardon, but poor Mr Crapper's hand-flush toilet was not up to the job. I had to leave my excretia for the butler."
"Aha...
It was a quiet Thursday morning and we were browsing the newspapers in Hunt's Baker Street apartment. There was troubling news - riots had broken out at a factory in London. Sherlock had a personal interest in the matter, for it had happened at Jenkins' Opium Refinement Plant, the factory that provided his private supply of opium.
"Bastards! The greedy bastards!" he raged. "Did you read this,...
I had been in the employ of the esteemed Mr Sherlock Hunt for some weeks now, and had become accustomed to his violent moods. However, I had also caught flashes of his genius, and was determined to remain his protege in order to learn as much as possible from the great man.
It was a Tuesday morning in late 1884, and I arrived at Baker Street to find a great hullabaloo. A local tradesman had del...
London 2012 has filled the media with tales of winning and coming second and third, and has boosted the nation's happiness rather like an Olympic penis being repeatedly rammed down one's throat.
But how does London 2012 compare with the first time London held the Olympics in 1908? Things have certainly changed a lot since then, but in some ways they have not changed much at all.
Great Brita...
The following is a Spoof news article from 1840, one of several articles discovered in a dusty box in the attic of Duncan Brown in Chelmsford.
It has come to the attention of all rational minded individuals that our beloved Queen of a mere three years, Queen Victoria, intends to marry into German nobility. Polite society has given notice that it has been appalled that such Visigoth blood should...
The world's interconnected telegraph network, also known as the intertelnet, has been running for a little over forty years now, sending Morse code messages around the civilised world. It was in 1832 that the first electrical telegrammatic message was sent from Dorking to Effingham by Lady Spongebob Telegraph, wife of the inventor Lord Jethro Telegraph. Famously, the message was a whimsical descri...
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence (how else could they look? did you ever hear of such a thing as a noisy look?). At length the caterpillar took the hookah pipe out of its mouth, and spoke to Alice in a languid drawl ('I've never been in a languid drawl before', thought Alice; 'it really is rather uncomfortable').
'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.
Thi...
The schoolmaster was leaving the village. Everybody seemed sorry. The miller at Cuttercombe lent him the little tilted cart to carry his worldy goods to the city where he was going, some twenty miles off.
"But still I am unable to move my worldly goods", said the schoolmaster. "Why be that, sir?" asked the miller, his weathered, flour-dusted visage peering up at the master.
"I have no horse"...
The modern urban dictionary defines a "pooner" in a number of different ways, but a lexicographer who frequently makes use of the Bodelian Library in Oxford has turned the closeted world of lexicography completely on its head.
Clem Baker, of Abing...
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government announced today that it would revive Victorian Workhouses in efforts to save on Welfare Benefits.
Under the 1601 Act for the relief of the poor, heralded by the Poor Law Amendment Act of...
A lack of diet and exercise has seen the return of rickets a popular disease of the victorian era. The consumption of fatty foods and the unwillingness of people to move very much has led to its return.
People in the North of England are proving...
Estate Agents throughout the UK are warning of a troubling three day slump in the Period Property market.
Mars Lander's robotic arm has uncovered yet more evidence that the Victorians successfully established a camp on the red planet. NASA had earlier hinted that magnified images from the Mars Orbiter appeared to show the letters 'ADE IN BIRMING...