Tourist information

[mercia]

I hope everyone will help foreign tourists visiting the UK for the first time by giving them Gerard Hoffnung's advice, as in:

"All London brothels display a blue lamp."

"You will oblige your chambermaid by hanging your mattress out of the window in the morning."

"Have you heard the famous echo in the Reading Room of the British Museum?"

I reckon the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue team pinched those from Hoffnung in their 'unhelpful advice to tourists' game

http://www.isihac.org.uk/ "People in a queue are actually waiting for you to go first" etc.

[umslopogaas]

Mercia, I think this is true and it has long fascinated me. Every comedian must draw something from his forebears. Dozeylocks and something locks and little ....divey. Oh where does that incomplete memory come from? Perhaps Tom ... Lehrer? NO, got it! It was Anna Russell, she who could reduce Wagner's operas to such mirth that I nearly fell off the sofa during her exposition of 'Der Ring'.

But I might just start an ancillary thought here: who are the funniest MUSIC comedians? OK, I'm sure there have been threads on this before, but I havent been around that long and anyway, there are so many [comedians, not threads].

I will nominate Arthur Askey, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, Tom Lehrer, Gerard Hoffnung and the 'Beyond The Fringe' team of Bennett, Cook, Miller and Moore. That's quite a team and I have to admit that I have no recordings of Arthur Askey, but if any-one does, bring them to the party. I've got lots of Flanders and Swann and the rest of the crew.

[Bryn]

Mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy.

[vinteuil]

Mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy.

... kids'll eat ivy too....

[Bryn]

Please do not pluralise. A kid will eat ivy too.

[umslopogaas]

Hasnt anyone got something from Arthur Askey? Something about picking [somethings] off the parson's nose? I sort of recall his voice, but cant produce an example.

[mercia]

that's from the Bee Song

http://www.justsomelyrics.com/1490231/arthur-askey-the-bee-song-lyrics.html

are we still talking about tourist information ?

[amateur51]

Crossing the pond via Scandinavia, may I include Victor Borge?

And salymap would almost certainly make a bid for Danny Kaye.