Jokes you don't/didn't get

[bloodteller]

i know there’s the thing of “the joke isn’t funny if you explain it” but were there ever gags in Red Dwarf you didn’t get? and if so, what?

i never quite got what Cat’s “stan and ollie” line in White Hole was about, for example. nor did i get what “see you in ten minutes?” (repeat x10) from Pete was all about, and also Rimmer’s “steers and queers, which are you boy?” joke from Meltdown

Topic

[clem]

What an idiot that “curtis” is, he’ll never make anything of himself in Red Dwarf fandom.

Yeah what a TOSser!

[Ridley]

Why do women always leave me for total smegheads? Why do they dump me for men who wear turtleneck sweaters and smoke a tobacco pipe? I mean, Yeo Valley Natural Organic Yoghurt eaters! Reliable, sensible, dependable, and lots of other words that end in “-ible.” He’s obsessed with house prices, and spends half his life in antique fairs looking for bargains and drinking Cinzano Bianco. It’s never Leopard Lager, is it, it’s always Cinzano Bianco! “What do you want on your Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut, darling?” “Oh, I’ll have some Cinzano Bianco, please!” Smeg!

Fridge-id.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut, darling?” “Oh, I’ll have some Cinzano Bianco, please!”

Sainsbury’s sell (and I bought a box) of shredded wheat filled with mince meat. That sentence now has me tempted to use Bailey’s instead of milk at some point.

[Flap Jack]

ME: “Look, don’t be afraid. I’m going to make you the king of Dwarf fandom. All you’ve got to do is listen very, very carefully.”

2019 ME: (nods)

ME: “Right, this is the plan. You’re going to be the first on Ganymede & Titan to mention a certain linguistic ambiguity.”

OTHER USER: “Ganymede and Titan?”

ME: “No, &! You know, as an ampersand! The one in the title of the site we’re currently on! Will you shut up? I’m trying to talk to the man!”

ME (cont.): “Are you listening? There’s a bit in Red Dwarf where Lister describes someone as a ‘natural yoghurt eater’…”

OTHER USER: “Like when they’re trying to find Kochanski in Stasis Leak?”

ME: “Look, do you mind, curtis? This is a private conversation. Go back to coming up with Ideas for an episode.”

[Ben Saunders]

“Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut, darling?” “Oh, I’ll have some Cinzano Bianco, please!”

Cinzano Bianco is just wine for wankers

[Pete Part Three]

I have tried Cinzano Bianco exactly once, in the actual Aigburth Arms in around 2003. It was not very nice, especially compared to the pints of erskib and the dry white wine and Perrier that we also ordered.

You couldn’t pay me to drink erskib.

You could pay me to fill the glass, mind.

[Dave]

They used to call me Dave “erskib” Lister. Because once you got rid of me, I was off the table.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’ll quite happily be paid to drink erskib. Where to I sign up?

[Pete Part Three]

Sorry, you can’t sign up. You have to remove your signature from the piece of paper.

[evilmorwen]

but then after you’ve done that they won’t let you have any more.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I guess I already am a member. Drink too much of the stuff and I’m regurgitating it.

[NoFro]

The Cinzano Bianco joke is great and I’m certain it’s about it being a shit drink.

[si]

The Cinzano Bianco joke is great and I’m certain it’s about it being a shit drink.

So that’s that.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Maybe in this universe, Cinazano Bianco is a really good drink.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Rob has spoken, it’ is a “no bugger will drink it” joke

The latter, I'm afraid.

— Rob Grant (@realrobgrant) November 22, 2020

[International Debris]

I concede.

[Pete Part Three]

Because I keep on falling behind in the Book Club and having to read parts in a mad rush, I snuck ahead to the final part of BTL earlier today.

Lister had a perverse sense of humour when he designated the tipple for his funeral…

[Dave]

Because I keep on falling behind in the Book Club and having to read parts in a mad rush, I snuck ahead to the final part of BTL earlier today.

Lister had a perverse sense of humour when he designated the tipple for his funeral…

I did exactly the same thing and had exactly the same thought.

[Kris ‘Drivaaar’ Carter]

I nominate this thread for Cinzano Bianco.

[clem]

I just got “Jim Reaper”.

[International Debris]

If your surname was Reaper, you wouldn’t call your kid Jim, would you?

[evilmorwen]

I felt very clever with myself for getting Jim Reaper when I was thirteen.

[By Jove its holmes]

I agree about Jim on a real baby with the surname Reaper.

The amount of parents with the surnames Bond and Kent who name their sons James and Clark deserve to be dealt with personally by the simulants.

[pendo86]

I literally just turned to the boyfriend and said “Everyone on G&T is talking about a joke with the name ‘Jim Reaper’ and I feel like I’m missing something. What’s the joke?”
He’s not a Red Dwarf fan and has no idea who Jim Reaper is, but he looked at me in disbelief and said “I’m guessing he appears when someone is about to die.”

Shame mode!

[clem]

To be fair, I’d never realised there was a joke there to get. It’s not like I’d been wondering why he’s called Jim Reaper every time I watched The Last Day all these years.

[si]

I literally just turned to the boyfriend and said “Everyone on G&T is talking about a joke with the name ‘Jim Reaper’ and I feel like I’m missing something. What’s the joke?”

He’s not a Red Dwarf fan and has no idea who Jim Reaper is, but he looked at me in disbelief and said “I’m guessing he appears when someone is about to die.”
Shame mode!

This guy’s on the fucking Fan Club team. *shakes head sadly*

[By Jove its holmes]

Pun names on real life human babies – the parents should be be dealt with by the simulants, or failing that, Caligula from Meltdown.

[MANI506]

I only just got the joke in Psirens about the meteor having a duty free shop this week after watching Jim B’s reaction vid. 27 years of bafflement.

[Stabbim the Skutter]

Alsatian dog after a headswap operation is one that’s always had me puzzled. Is a headswap operation a real thing? Swapping heads with what, another alsatian? Is it something to do with brain surgery, or do they mean decapitating two dogs, swapping the heads, then stitching them back together? Surely the dogs would be dead by then, or is that the joke?

[Pete Part Three]

It’s likely a reference to Vladimir Demikhov, who made a habit of transplanting dog heads onto other dogs (not specifically “exchanging”/“swapping” heads, but grafting another head onto a dog). The dogs didn’t always instantly die…but didn’t last very long.

What a prick.

[RunawayTrain]

Alsatian dog after a headswap operation is one that’s always had me puzzled. Is a headswap operation a real thing? Swapping heads with what, another alsatian? Is it something to do with brain surgery, or do they mean decapitating two dogs, swapping the heads, then stitching them back together? Surely the dogs would be dead by then, or is that the joke?

I actually thought they turned into humanoid versions of the animals, but with the heads being instantly recognisable for the gag to be obvious. Maybe I need to rewatch to check though.

If it was headswapping, that far into the future it is probably conceivable (in the sense of hand-waving it away with ‘they’ll have had time to make the technological advances to make it possible’). The first thing that came to mind reading your comment about head swapping / transplanting was all the heads alive and functioning in Futurama, and that’s only 1000 years into the future – and you have the Borg Queen who is a head and spinal column. Of course they are in different universes, but a fairly common sci-fi concept. Well, anything is possible in sci-fi within the established rules of each universe anyway!

[RunawayTrain]

^ Oops, I was thinking of the unreality bubble in OOT*, forgot there was an actual joke about it before that! Well, the hand-wavey sci-fi reasoning still stands I think, but I too now have questions!

(*See also, “Baldrick, who gave you permission to turn into an Alsatian?”)

However in Googling it (because after I posted I had a feeling I was thinking of the wrong thing) if turns out some guy claims to have done head swaps on corpses … I couldn’t dig much deeper than 2 articles because the thought of it in reality (rather than an abstract concept) is horrifying me. But if anyone is curious, Sergio Canavero is his name.

Edit: huh, apparently I can edit this comment but not my previous. Weird.

[Dave]

Edit: huh, apparently I can edit this comment but not my previous. Weird.

There’s a short time limit for edits. Five minutes I think.

[RunawayTrain]

There’s a short time limit for edits. Five minutes I think.

I’ve seen the 5 min countdown on replies to articles, but didn’t realise the time limit applied on forum posts too. Evidently it does – thanks for clearing that up!

[Ridley]

Been making my way through the show on Blu-ray. Only noticing now, after 20 smegging years, that the sewing machine used by Kochanski in Blue is called Talkie Sew N Sew.

I don’t need this joke Xplained, just borrowing the thread.

[GlenTokyo]

Been making my way through the show on Blu-ray. Only noticing now, after 20 smegging years, that the sewing machine used by Kochanski in Blue is called Talkie Sew N Sew.

I don’t need this joke Xplained, just borrowing the thread.

That’s the best gag in VII

[Ridley]

Sorry, it’s not even the best gag in the episode which is the hypnotherapy mix up.

I feel “I was decorated then used as a Christmas tree” should be bigger but the rhythm is thrown off due to no live audience for Barrie to react to and the laugh track itself burying the line.

[Veeva]

In Legion, when Kryten is listing the physicists involved with the project, I never understood why Quayle got a laugh from the audience.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

In Legion, when Kryten is listing the physicists involved with the project, I never understood why Quayle got a laugh from the audience.

At the time he was the Vice President of the USA. So it was something of known name that would have been ridiculous to think of as a physicist, despite the fact Kryten was probably referencing someone else further in the future.

[Dave]

Also, one of the most infamous moments of Quayle’s political career was him visiting a school and encouraging a child to mis-spell “potato” by adding an “e” on the end, a huge gaffe that would have still been fresh in the audience’s mind at the time of Legion. So the idea of including him alongside other great minds is a bit of a joke.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Ah I did not know that. Very interesting.

[Dave]

Yeah, it became a defining moment for him (perhaps unfairly) and meant that people around that time associated him with stupidity.

[Hamish]

And there was the whole “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” thing on top of that. SNL got into the habit of using a child actor to portray him.

[Hamish]

There is that one line in in the fourth Hitchhiker’s novel where it describes how the dog “Know Nothing Bozo” was so named because “the way its hair stood up on its head it reminded people of the President of the United States.”

Since the book was released in 1984 I am guessing Adams is referring to Reagan?

[clem]

I don’t remember that but Reagan was a bit of a bête noire of his. See also ‘Young Zaphod Plays It Safe’.

[Veeva]

Another one I didn’t get from Series VI is…

Rimmer: Vietnam, crew cuts both sides, no score draw!

Kryten: All for a really world class psychiatrist.

[Ridley]

(It’s “Oh” not “All.”)

[Dax101]

There are alot of celeb names in Red Dwarf in the early days that i have no idea who they are still. like glenn miller. i think its a joke that works best if you know who that is.

[RunawayTrain]

There are alot of celeb names in Red Dwarf in the early days that i have no idea who they are still. like glenn miller. i think its a joke that works best if you know who that is.

Just checking – do you know who Glenn Miller is and how he disappeared?

[Veeva]

(It’s “Oh” not “All.”)

That makes more sense

[Author]

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