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

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Sadly, I never got picked. The person who did get picked asked the much more pertinent and interesting question of “What’s your favorite episode of Red Dwarf?”.

Don’t leave us hanging, what was the answer?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I think Robert Llewellyn mentioned ‘Lemons’ and I immediately tuned out.

[flanl3]

Uh oh, not a man with taste, not around here

[Dave]

The “couple of blanks” arse-cheek gag from The End. I didn’t even realise there was a gag there until I listened to the commentary.

[ori-STUDFARM]

There’s a lot of early references went over my head…Moss Bros and Teasy-Weasy is one that instantly springs to mind. Reading through the above, a few of those too.

[Ridley]

>I thought it was a pun on the debt-related phrase, but without any deeper meaning to it.

Well, it’s back on Red Dwarf and the episodes are bookended with the Dwarfers having to pay a debt to society.

[tombow]

I was always confused by Cat boasting about his thrusts being as fast as a drill or jird, because aren’t good lovers stereotypically slow and measured?

[Hamish]

And would Cat really make a good lover tombow?

[tombow]

No, but he seems to think he would based on speed. I guess…I was a confused kid when I saw it, so I kind of wondered if men were meant to be fast lovers, as I’d heard people on other sitcoms joking about men being too fast.

[Pete Part Three]

Cat is referring to the motion in the ocean, not the speed at which the ocean is traversed.

[Ben Saunders]

Cat has a high PPS (pumps per second)

[Lily]

>aren’t good lovers stereotypically slow and measured?

That’s all good and well, but sometimes you just want a good Black&Decker’ing.

[Unrumble]

Obvious ones like not getting references when I was younger, especially in the earlier series “the poor goit you made look like Helen Shapiro!.”

I think it was a while before I understood the implication of “Maybe Ace-hole” too…

[Taiwan Tony]

>That’s all good and well, but sometimes you just want a good Black&Decker’ing.

Easily the sexiest thing I’ve read today.

[Plastic Percy]

I’ve only just bothered to learn that a Jird, more accurately named a Persian Jird, is in fact a real animal.

[R.C.M.]

From Backwards: “It’s exactly like I always imagined, only much shorter.”

Maybe I’m mis-remembering things, but wasn’t there a deleted line/scene that explains why Kryten says this?

[Ben Saunders]

I assume the joke is he read up on Earth in books and, from the pictures, assumed that trees were absolutely enormous, so he looks at the extremely tall trees and remarks that they seem rather short.

If there was a deleted scene to explain that joke and I’ve gotten it wrong I’d love to know.

[NoFro]

I think “…only much shorter” is just a funny nonsensical line which I’ve always loved. Earth could be bigger or smaller than Kryten imagined but it doesn’t make sense to comment on the Earth as being “tall” or “short”, especially when Kryten’s on the surface and can’t even see the whole thing. I think the look on Rimmer’s face is evidence that it’s supposed to be nonsensical.

[Lily]

I always thought it was a play on the thing where people say that actors look shorter in real life than they do on tv/film.

[NoFro]

Yes, that too!

[Dave]

If that was the joke then I never got it.

[Ben Saunders]

When the question was first asked I thought “only much shorter” wasn’t a particularly good joke, ie it was alright, but now I’m amazed that it works on all three levels and am convinced it’s genius

[bloodteller]

In response to the discussion from a while ago, I re-read IWCD the other day, and it’s mentioned in a later chapter that “George McIntrye was force-fed his own nose”, so they definitely did cut it off. How gruesome

[Warbodog]

“How come you need more memory? Over the years, you’ve had more RAM than a field of sheep.”

‘Had’ as in sex. Not: he’s got more RAM than the number of rams you get in a standard field of sheep.

Which, being the son of a farmer, I knew was often just the one, on its own rather than mixed with the ewes, and thus a bit of an underwhelming comparison to make for Kryten’s supposedly impressive memory capacity, whatever units they’re using. It confused me slightly when watching the Xtended video repeatedly at 12.

[Dave]

I guess if Rimmer doesn’t know the intimate details of sheep farming then it still works as something he’d say.

[Dave]

(Or Cat or Lister, or whoever the fuck says it.)

[Warbodog]

Also only recently realised that fan favourite character Dr Lucas McLaren is asking “your chair is screwed down?” because he’s worried Kryten’s going to attack him with the chair, not some oblique way of suggesting he’s got a screw loose.

I haven’t watched VII or VIII much since I was about 14, so some of these youthful misconceptions go unchecked for decades.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Also only recently realised that fan favourite character Dr Lucas McLaren is asking “your chair is screwed down?” because he’s worried Kryten’s going to attack him with the chair, not some oblique way of suggesting he’s got a screw loose.

So THAT’S what that’s about. I’d always assumed it was the latter explaination.

[Paul Muller]

“Personally I prefer partnership Whist” – I understand the point of it, but it’s such an obscure activity to reference. They could have gone with backgammon or tiddlywinks, or elected for an obvious wanking gag and chosen Solitaire.

I guess it’s because I watched most of Red Dwarf as a ten year old, so jokes based around 18th century card games were always going to fly over my head. For a long time, I thought it was some kind of dance.

[Warbodog]

“If she ever ran into Tutankhamen, he wouldn’t stand a chance. She’d have his bandages off before you could say ‘silicone implants.'”

Didn’t get the breast implant reference at the time. I suppose: as well as the obvious joke about a 3,000-year-old man being more attractive by her definition than an 83-year-old, a king’s considerable wealth also makes him more attractive to a presumed gold digger than an actor, and the first thing she’d spend it on is cosmetic surgery, because that’s what a materialistic floozy would do.

Or maybe Lister just saw her photo and she had big breasts.

[bloodteller]

>“Personally I prefer partnership Whist”

up until now i thought he was saying “personally i prefer partnership waist” and it was some sort of health program like weightwatchers

[clem]

“Can someone take him outside and do something to him? Ideally involving ice cubes and any puckered body cavity.”

And the callback line about the wooden mallet only confuses me further. Anyone?

[By Jove its holmes]

put an ice cube in his mouth then hit it with a mallet?

[Warbodog]

My mind always goes to the mouth with these things, but consensus opinion on where Rimmer tried to insert the fridge and guitar lead me to conclude arse. Weird lines anyway.

[Ben Saunders]

Shove an ice cube up his arse? That’s a bit bizarre

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Rimmer isn’t exactly normal is he.

[GlenTokyo]

Knowing Doug’s writing, maybe it’s a reference to a film he saw at the time.

Don’t know what films would involve someone having ice cubes shoved up their arse and/or getting hit with a mallet but the 90s had some odd ones and Doug has eclectic taste I’m sure.

Sounds a sexual to be honest, the ice cubes bit. All a bit weird haha

[MANI506]

Why does Cat call Rimmer Cinninatti at the start of Cured?

[Ben Saunders]

Isn’t it something to do with rimming?

[bloodteller]

yeah, a Cinncinatti Truffle is where you fart in someone’s mouth during rimming. it”s a (surprisingly subtle) joke about Rimmer’s name/rimming. also i think the only joke about rimming in the entire show

[Dave]

There’s also “brown-tongued his way up the ranks” in Dimension Jump.

[cwickham]

Cinncinatti is also a poker term, I believe.

[bloodteller]

>Cinncinatti is also a poker term, I believe.

yeah it is, but they’re evidently not playing cinncinatti poker (i haven’t watched Cured in ages, but they’re just playing regular 5-card poker iirc) so i think the intent is that it’s a rimming joke? even if that wasn’t the intent, surely it’s funnier if cat is making a snide remark about farting in someone’s mouth than him just inexplicably giving rimmer a poker-based nickname that’s totally unrelated to the variation of poker they’re actually playing

[cwickham]

Okay, but what’s more likely: It’s a reference to “Cincinnati Truffles” which doesn’t actually give the viewer enough information to work out that’s what it’s a reference to, or it’s a reference to a type of poker?

[GlenTokyo]

It’s almost certainly a poker reference.

It’s cards banter innit.

[bloodteller]

>Okay, but what’s more likely: It’s a reference to “Cincinnati Truffles” which doesn’t actually give the viewer enough information to work out that’s what it’s a reference to, or it’s a reference to a type of poker?

the first one

[Dave]

Doug has form for this: the “female aardvark” is a well-known sexual position and “trout a la creme” is disgusting slang for a popular fetish.

[International Debris]

I honestly find the idea of Doug knowing what “Cincinnati truffles” means incredibly unlikely.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Maybe Doug is into that kind of thing. Or late one night, he found himself going down a dark rabbit hole on Urban Dictionary.

Or, just perhaps, the name cincinnati truffle has been co-opted by the fetish community and Doug is much more familiar with the origins of the name in the card game.

[GlenTokyo]

>I honestly find the idea of Doug knowing what “Cincinnati truffles” means incredibly unlikely.

This.

I also doubt his light reading is Urban Dictionary, probably more of a New Scientist kinda guy. If it is a reference to being farted on while rimming someone, then that doesn’t have Doug’s fingerprints on it for my money, maybe a suggestion from elsewhere.

[Author]

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