Have you ever found that once you are between the sheets Madame Bovary is too heavy, magazines are too slippery, and The Guns of Navarone too long? In that case "A Gentleman's Bedside Book" is perfectly designed to satisfy those final moments of the days with facts, stories, ideas and instructions that will help every bright boy to become a smarter man with a well rounded curriculum of lessons in Science, English, Home Economics, R.E, Modern Languages, P.E, Art, Music and Woodwork.
This is a lucky dip of bedside derring-do, humour, and oddity, written in his unique style by best-selling humourist Tom Cutler. It is ridiculously fascinating, and very funny. It includes such entries as: human anatomy for the practical man; the most frequent dream subjects; delicious caustic curries you can make; emergency meals from nowhere; shaving - top tips from the pros; deerstalkers and why they matter; and, how to grow a dashing moustache.
This title also includes entries such as: how to open a Champagne bottle with a sword; Samuel Pepys - the rude bits; best ever book titles; tongue twisters; those you may not marry, from "The Book of Common Prayer"; the worst ever movie dialogue; useful foreign chat-up lines; an international swearing dictionary; filthy foreign food; historic dumb predictions; the history of concrete; dad rock; coming out on top in a pub brawl; how to dissolve your wife; mental arithmetic tricks for the practical man - ten tricks; famous car crashes and victims; the seven habits of the highly effective Lothario; really bad chat-up lines; best urban legends - a list; sword swallowing for fun and profit; how to develop a gigantic memory; and, mind blowing mind reading for the complete novice.
Contents
SCIENCE
Health and the Body
1 Doctor slang 6
2 Breasts: infrequently asked questions 8
3 Human anatomy for the practical man 10
4 Strain versus stress, or how to be happy tomorrow 13
Abnormal Science
5 Making a stink: the world’s smelliest chemical 15
6 The weirdness of earthquakes 17
7 Ball lightning 19
8 ‘Canals’ on Mars 21
The World of Numbers
9 Orders of magnitude explained 23
10 A spoonful of pi 24
11 ‘My Financial Career’ by Stephen Leacock 26
12 Fibonacci numbers and the golden mean 29
The World of Dreams
13 The most frequent dream subjects 33
14 Freud and his hang-ups 35
15 Famous dreams 38
Drugs and Poisons
16 Arsenic and old Luce 41
17 The story of heroin 44
18 The discovery of insulin 46
MAN ABOUT TOWN
Grooming, Dress and Gentlemanly Panache
19 How to iron a shirt 52
20 Shaving: top tips from the pros 54
21 Improve that pronunciation 57
22 Turn-ups for the book 60
23 The man who wore brown shoes in the City 61
24 How to grow a dashing moustache 64
Man Cooking
25 How to slaughter and bleed a pig 68
26 The perfect hamburger in a twinkling 70
27 How to open a champagne bottle with a sword 71
28 Eponymous nosh: dishes named after people 73
29 Novel dishes for the jaded palate 77
30 Bloody hot chilli 80
SPORT, SPEED, ACTION AND ADVENTURE
Mainly Aerobic
31 How to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel 84
32 Coming out on top in a pub brawl 86
33 How to smash paving slabs with your bare hands 88
Mainly Isometric
34 Edward Ciderhands: a game for real men 91
35 How to build a snowman 92
Cars
36 The Mini story 94
37 Famous car crash victims 96
38 How to wash a car: Luton, Croydon and Belgravia methods 98
Bikes
39 The Vespa story 101
40 From boneshaker to Stumpjumper: 200 years of the bicycle 103
41 Puncture repair: coffee-spoon method 107
ARTS AND LETTERS
English Literature
42 Samuel Pepys: the rude bits 112
43 Lost and sometimes found again literary masterpieces 115
44 Best ever book titles 118
45 The guaranteed failure that went wrong and succeeded
by mistake 119
46 ‘Jabberwocky’: auf Deutsch 120
47 The best of The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce 121
48 Banned books 123
English Language
49 Mark Twain’s plan for the improvement of English spelling 127
50 Medical mnemonics you will remember 128
51 Man bites dog: funny real newspaper headlines 129
52 Twenty-five rules for improving your English 131
Painting
53 Brushes with death: famous painters and what they died of 134
54 How to draw a cat 135
55 The incredible story of Salvador Dalí 139
Music Strangeness and the Problem of Noise
56 The story behind the Rolling Stones 142
57 ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ and that rumour 146
58 Guitar heroes 148
59 ‘Silent Night’: how it happened 152
60 The Monkees: a potted history 155
61 The mysteries of Dad Rock 157
HOBBIES
Old-fashioned Activities in the Shed
62 The ship in the bottle 160
63 How to tie a fly 162
64 How to dissolve your wife 163
House and Garden DIY
65 How to make a smokehouse out of an old fridge 165
66 Build your own log cabin 166
67 ‘Uncle Podger hangs a picture’ by Jerome K. Jerome 168
68 Health and safety madness 172
THE MEDIA
Famous Radio and Television Performances
69 The first ever pissed commentator 176
70 The most disastrous chat-show guest ever 178
71 Archie Andrews and other things not to do on the radio 180
Behind the TV Classics
72 Doctor Who 182
73 M*A*S*H 183
74 Mission: Impossible 185
75 ‘Energize!’ The story of Star Trek 187
76 Batman 189
Cinema
77 Great war films 191
78 The best and worst movie dialogue 194
79 Coming in Hindi: Bollywood explained 195
80 Attack of the 50-foot B-movie 196
81 The Oscars that went wrong 200
RELIGION FOR THE PRACTICAL MAN
Christianity Explored
82 Bananas as proof of God’s existence 204
83 Great bits from the Bible 206
84 Those you may not marry, from the Book of
Common Prayer 210
85 Guess the age of the church: English churches in a nutshell 212
86 The big monkey fight 217
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Geography
87 The continents: a reminder 220
88 The world’s tiniest countries 221
89 The thirty-eight countries of North America 223
90 The incredible Kingdom of Redonda 226
Intercourse with Aliens
91 Best Portuguese chat-up lines 228
92 Filthy foreign food 229
93 Latin and Greek for the practical άντρας 231
94 The twenty-two official languages of India 233
95 An international swearing and insult dictionary 235
NUGACIOUS DEVIATION
Big Stuff
96 Tyrannosaurus rex 238
97 All about submarines 240
98 Twelve things you didn’t know about Hoover Dam 242
99 The man who invented pyramids 243
100 The Harrier Jump Jet 246
Potpourris
101 Bed warmers since Aristotle 248
102 Find your remote control 250
103 The story of the Gettysburg Address 252
104 The Beaufort wind scale 255
105 Historic dumb predictions 258
Oddball Gentlemen (and a Lady)
106 John Harvey Kellogg, a natural flake 260
107 ‘La Goulue’, inventor of the cancan 262
108 Matthew Robinson, lord of the water 264
109 Rector of Stiffkey, ‘Prostitutes’ Padre’ eaten by a lion 266
110 Le Pétomane 269
RELATIONSHIPS AND THAT
Love, Romance and ‘Horizontal Refreshment’
111 The ten habits of the highly effective Lothario 274
112 Classic sleeping positions and what they say about you 275
113 Really bad chat-up lines 280
114 Three great lovers 281
115 The top twenty-five things women hate about men 285
New Man Skills
116 Are babies dangerous? 289
117 A look at washing machines 290
118 Putting the remote down and other new man behaviours 292
SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS
Showmanship
119 Sword-swallowing for fun and profit 296
120 Harry Houdini: small man, big mouth 298
121 A bedtime coin trick 301
Great Hoaxes and Swindles
122 ‘Find the Lady’ explained 303
123 Operation Mincemeat 305
124 The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals 309
Author Biography
The son of a sex therapist and a sometime Dominican friar, he began his professional career with a number of false starts as a teacher, set designer, doublebass player, speechwriter, printer, toyshop manager, lyricist, wine waiter, City consultant, puppet maker, typographer, magazine editor, bandleader, portrait painter, radio reporter, cartoonist, and ghost writer for Cardinal Hume. Tom has written two acclaimed song books for children and his original ditty 'Pigs on Holiday' has been performed live, with actions, by Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein. He has written a number of comedy books including 211 Things a Bright Girl/Boy Can Do.
