On this occasion The Rasmus weren't farting
Including jokes in groundbreaking .wav format: the glorious future!
Hello. It is February 2024. This is the fourteenth monthly instalment of Interesting Skull, a newsletter with about a hundred big chuckles and almost as many thoughts by me, local unknown and mysteriously tense writer Mike Rampton. Are you warm? ARE YOU WARM?
1
“I’ve been sacked from the farm for doing something odd on their small chair.”
“Milking stool?”
“No, not that odd. That’s… really odd.”
2
“A beloved British actress was saying the Latin initialism that was supposedly etched onto the cross of Jesus. She was doing an impression of the Kiss From A Rose singer, and I tried to persuade her to lean harder into the impersonation and make it sound even more like him.”
“Sealier INRI?”
“No, Dame Judi Dench.”
3
“I went to the Burj Khalifa with an influential German feminist sex educator who was impressed by many elements of it.”
“Shere Hite?”
“Of course, that’s extraordinary, but interior infrastructural elements like the plumbing system are no less impressive.”
The old ones are the best. Hey, what a tiring month January was! I’m so tired! My car, dishwasher and wife’s ankle all broke in the space of about ten days — I believe the mechanic, plumber and doctor all used the word “smithereens” — and all three of us were ill for pretty much the whole month. We’re having work done on the house that involves clearing the whole downstairs, but it’s happening at five-day intervals, so I am constantly moving plants and furniture from room to room wishing I was, you know, earning some money instead.
The other day I was slightly panicking from just how much I had to get done, and I knocked a massive jar of stuff over. As it smashed on the ground — yep, smithereens again — I just nodded sensibly, because of course that had happened, why wouldn’t it? Then there was a knock at the door and I went to answer it completely confident that whoever was there would kick the hell out of me. One of those days, you know? Last night I was working and my daughter burst her hot water bottle — a difficult thing to do, and a messy one! — and I think one of my eyes rotated a full 360 degrees, into my head and out of it again.
Nevertheless, I have managed to send off the text of a book, set to come out in — it says here — early 2026. What? Jesus Christ. Why have I been getting into such a state about something not coming out for two whole years? We’ll all fully rotate the Sun, and then fully rotate the Sun again, before anyone sees it? What the absolute hell? I’ve wept tears of blood finishing that! I AM SO SLEEPY.
I keep notes on my phone when I have an idea for one of my great jokes, but have no idea what “Hi, I’m Claude Monet, plop plop plop” means. Presumably something about being an impressionist, but the plops? A mystery.
I also had a couple of jokes that I worried could be misconstrued as offensive. One was about Moses and a fizzy drink, the other was about a middle-aged woman in Nando’s. Both were just silly puns — I like things that sound like other things — with nothing else to them, but they both just made me hesitate a bit (one due to one of the words in it, one due to potentially being seen as trivialising a serious issue) and wonder if I would lower my voice if telling them in public, so they’re gone. I’m old, tired and pleasant and just want everyone to have a nice time. I get that my jokes are wilfully difficult, but the point of them is still to make people laugh (even if they have to look three or four things up on Wikipedia first).
A lot of people in comedy (which is a world I do not inhabit) seem to think being funny isn’t enough, and they need to “tell it like it is” and “speak truth to power”. And unfortunately, a lot of them are also dicks, and their version of “how it is” is a dick version, and they manage to convince themselves that despite being the only person speaking in a large room, with hundreds of people paying to listen, and Netflix millions sitting in their bank accounts, that they’re outsider underdog warrior-poets on missions of truth. Nah, you’re making mean, ignorant jokes about people’s genitals. Grow up. (I watched a Dave Chappelle thing this month, obviously.)
I enjoyed being a teenage provocateur as much as anyone, and kept it going a decade longer than most, and to what end? I made some people laugh, but also almost certainly made other people uncomfortable, and won’t ever be able to undo that. There was a story in the news ages ago, ten years at least, where Jim Davidson got upset because there were people in wheelchairs in the front row, and that meant he couldn’t do some of his material. If you have to look around the pub before telling a joke, to make sure the wrong kind of people aren’t there, you’re Jim Davidson. Don’t be Jim Davidson.
Luckily, I’m the greatest joke writer in the world, so if I’m ever in any doubt, I just effortlessly write another four-quadrant crowdpleaser and get carried aloft by my laughing peers.
A LIGHT ANECDOTE TO CLEANSE THE PALATE AFTER THAT: I went to a concert recently with a fairly new friend. I was very aware that the last time we had hung out, doing a pub quiz, I had been a bit unwell and was drinking stout and had farted quite a lot. At the concert, the crowd was mostly ageing men of a certain size, and a lot of them were farting. At any given point, perhaps ten farts were being done. On this occasion I wasn’t farting, but I was worried that I’d established myself as someone that farted all the time, and the farts being done all around me would be assumed to be emanating from me. I don’t have a lot of friends, and every fart that I was aware of — most by smell, but I absolutely heard a few and am pretty sure I felt some waft against me — increased this feeling of worry. Then I farted. That’s the story.
4
Who paints ballerinas and can tell if you fancy men?
Edgar Gedas.
5
What is the lead singer of Disturbed’s favourite part of a bird or reptile?
Cloacacaca! (This joke works better in audio form, here you go:)
6
“We’ve just received letters asking us to be witnesses in a court case about a man hurting his perineum.”
“Subpoenas?”
“Yeah, the bit under there, yeah.”
(Gedas, yeah? Like Degas. It would be pronounced like ‘gaydar’. And INRI is a Latin initialisation for ‘King of the Jews’, but you knew that.)
I don’t like Instagram, but put a video on it to promote this newsletter. It resulted in a mere one new subscriber, so now I like Instagram even less. I don’t need new subscribers. I like the approximately six of you just fine.
Last month I shared my brand-new pioneering joke format, Taylor Swiftlies, and the response was absolutely whelming. I got offered these two:
“I’m so glad I quit acting in Beverly Hills to go work in the Church” said Jason, priestly.
“Thinking about my relationship with Hugh Grant makes me sick,” said Liz, hurly.
There was also one about “Bridget, Christ-y” which was rubbish. But thank you to Nick and Laura. I also came up with a few more:
“I can’t present Antiques Roadshow, the skin has come off my face!” said Hugh, skully.
“As a dictator I am very upset my chocolate pudding is at an angle!” said Benito, mousse all leany.
And one that only works in audio and might be pushing it all too far:
Someone’s going to make a million quid. There’s one more idea that has been percolating in my mind for almost two decades and I need to get rid of. Please, someone do something with this:
I want to write a romantic novel, set in modern London, written in the first person. The narrator is a young man who meets an unusual, wonderful woman and falls in love with her. There’s something compellingly strange about her, the way she seems adorably baffled by so many things, and the way she dresses is like something from a bygone era. It’s all written incredibly sincerely and romantically, a genuinely lovely story. But slowly, as he pieces all her quirks together, he realises that she is the Victorian chambermaid from the In The Shadows music video by The Rasmus, the one who got transported into the modern day. She is quite matter-of-fact about her time travel, and has no regrets, but does get confused by a lot of elements of modern life and stuff. The narrator doesn’t know how to deal with any of this — the Rasmus are no help — but eventually they live happily ever after and he teaches her about, you know, the internet. It’s like Somewhere In Time for millennials (I have not seen Somewhere In Time).
Please write this, so I can stop thinking about it.
7
“I’d had a few drinks, and found a sculpture made from a striped mineral, an insect-shaped spiritlike creature dating from pre-Islamic Arabic pagan belief systems.”
“Djinn ant onyx?”
“No, three Kronenbourgs and a Jagerbomb.”
8
“Once we come up with a name for this spicy condiment made especially for putting on corn, we’ll play Cluedo, and you can be whichever character you like.”
“Kernel mustard?”
“Let’s come up with the name first.”
9
It must be tiring watching snooker as a talking horse because whenever anyone says “Missed a red” you have to say “That's my name, don't wear it out!”
January in numbers: Watched three films and twenty-eight episodes of television (including three of Gladiators, which I am desperate to somehow earn money writing about). Read seven books. Had two baths. Went out at night twice. Drove 121 miles in one go, which is the furthest I’ve done so far, and nearly wet myself (it was a photo finish, I pretty much leapt from a moving car into the McDonald’s near Royston and made it with no time to spare at all, it was very undignified). Fairly sure I didn’t do any exercise at all. Heart rate never dropped below 800 beats a minute.
Project updates: The October release of PROJECT SLURM, also known as There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question: 213 Weird and Wonderful Questions About the World, Expertly Answered!, written by me and illustrated by Guilherme Karsten, draws ever nearer. I have now seen five-sixths of the illustrations and they’re wonderful. I need to write the ‘about the author’ bit, which is tricky, as I’ve only had one book out and nobody bought it. I might mainly focus on my matinee-idol looks. There’s a chance I’ll get to narrate the audiobook, which I am excited about, but it might just be that everyone is very polite. You’ve heard my voice.
As mentioned above, I have finished writing PROJECT BACHELOR CHOW, and it’s out from Bloomsbury in 2026. If anyone’s going to the Bologna Book Fair, it’ll be in their catalogue. I’ve seen some illustrations, and they’re great. PROJECT POPPLERS should be finished by the next Interesting Skull. I’ve done a bit more on PROJECT LÖBRAU, while on a train. You know how I said earlier that I don’t like upsetting people anymore? This, a novel-length tale of madness, monsters and maulings, disproves that — it’s really horrible. It’s all dead animals, grotesque injuries and wearing other people’s body parts, and is either great or rubbish and I need to finish it to find out.
Fun fact: I tried to make a joke about dung beetles and a famous London landmark, with the punchline “Coleoptera’s needle”, work for absolutely ages. I don’t think it’s doable.
What a lot of make-no-money things I’m not quite up to! Feel free to buy me a pint if you want (I guarantee any/all donations will go on pints). Tell me I’m good! Next issue: March 1st. HAVE A LOVELY MONTH
10
WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING
I’ll Get To Your Court Case Soon by Justice Second
Get Ready For Our Guests by Lady Table
May I Rent Your Spare Vehicle? by Alicia Oldcar
What I’m Ordering In The Pub by Abigail Anna Bagonuts
Almost All You Need To Play Snakes And Ladders by Diana Board