Сергей Матвеев - Самые лучшие английские анекдоты
“You are five today. Happy birthday to you!”
“Thank you, Mama.”
“Would you like to have a cake with five candles on it for your birthday party?”
“I think I’d better have five cakes and one candle, Mama.”
* * *“Mother, we’re going to play elephants at the Zoo. Will you help us?”
“What can I do?”
“You can be the lady who gives them nuts and sweets.”
* * *“Isn’t it wonderful how little chicks get out of their shells?”
“What puzzles me is how they get into them.”
* * *“How is your little brother, Johnny?”
“He is in bed. He hurt himself.”
“That’s too bad. How did he do it?”
“We were playing who could lean furthest out of the window, and he won.”
* * *“Is your dog clever?”
“Very. When I say to him: come here or don’t come here, just as you please, he comes or he doesn’t come, as he pleases.[83]”
* * *A father took his young daughter to the cinema. He took a seat in the middle of the hall while his daughter sat down in the front row to join some other children. The film was showing a forest fire which frightened the little girl very much and she came back to take a seat beside her father.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Did the fire frighten you?”
“Oh, no!” she answered. “The smoke got in my eyes.”
* * *“What is the difference between lightning and electricity?”
“Well, you don’t have to pay for lightning.”
* * *“So, Joe was the life of the party?[84]”
“Oh, yes. He was the only one who could talk louder than the radio.”
* * *“That letter is too heavy,” said the clerk in the post office, after weighing the letter.
“You’ll have to put another stamp on it.”
“What’s the good of that?” said the boy. “If I put another stamp on it, that will make it still heavier.”
* * *“It was so cold where we were,” said the Arctic explorer, “that the candle froze and we couldn’t blow it out.”
“That’s nothing,” said another man. “Where we were the words came out of our mouths in pieces of ice, and we fried them to see what we were talking about.”
* * *“Is it bad luck when a black cat follows you?”
“That depends on whether you are a man or a mouse.”
* * *An American and a Scotchman were walking near the foot of one of the Scotch mountains. The Scotchman called forth the strongest echo that could ever be heard in that place. When the echo was clearly heard after almost two minutes, the proud Scotchman, turning to the American, exclaimed, “You cannot show anything like that in your country!”
“Why,” said the American, “in my camp in the Rockies,[85] when I go to bed, I just call out, ‘Time to get up; wake up’, and eight hours afterwards the echo comes back and wakes me up.”
* * *Robert smiled when the teacher read the story of a man who swam a river three times before breakfast.
“Do you doubt that a trained swimmer could do that?” asked the teacher.
“No, sir,” answered Robert, “but I wonder why he didn’t make it four times and swim back to the side where his clothes were.”
* * *“Tom, your hands are very dirty. What would you say if I came to school with dirty hands?”
“I should be too polite, sir, to mention it.”
* * *“I can’t think why they make so much noise about Miss Smith’s voice. Miss Jones has a much richer voice.”
“Yes, but Miss Smith has a much richer father.”
* * *“Have any of your childhood hopes been realized?”
“Yes. When Mother used to pull my hair, I wished that I didn’t have any.”
* * *A magician was working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. The audience would be different each week, so the magician allowed himself to do the same tricks over and over again.
There was only one problem: the captain’s parrot saw the shows each week and began to understand how the magician did every trick. Once he understood he started shouting in the middle of the show.
“Look, it’s not the same hat.”
“Look, he is hiding the flowers under the table.”
“Hey, why are all the cards the Ace of Spades?[86]”
The magician was furious but couldn’t do anything; it was, after all, the captain’s parrot.
One day the ship had an accident and sank. The magician found himself on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean with the parrot, of course.
They stared at each other with hate, but did not utter a word. This went on for a day, and another and another.
After a week the parrot said, “OK, I give up.[87] Where’s the boat?”
* * *“I’m really worried about my wife. She drives like lightning.”
“Do you mean that she drives too fast?”
“No, but she always strikes trees.”
* * *“Honey,” said a husband to his wife, “I invited a friend home for supper.”
“What? Are you crazy? The house is a mess, I didn’t go shopping, all the dishes are dirty, and I don’t feel like cooking a fancy meal!”
“I know all that.”
“Then why did you invite a friend for supper?”
“Because the poor fool is thinking about getting married.”
* * *There were three guys talking in the pub. Two of them were talking about the amount of control they had over their wives, while the third remained quiet.
After a while one of the first two turned to the third and said, “Well, what about you? What sort of control do you have over your wife?”
The third fellow says, “I’ll tell you. Just the other night my wife came to me on her hands and knees.”
The first two guys were amazed. “Wow! What happened then?” they asked.
The third man took a healthy swallow of his beer, sighed and uttered, “She said, ‘Get out from under the bed and fight like a man!’”
* * *“Mummy, I’ve got a stomach ache,” said Nelly, a little girl of six.
“That’s because you’ve been without lunch. Your stomach is empty. You would feel better if you had something in it.”
In the afternoon the minister came to see Nelly’s mother. While they talked, the minister remarked that he had been suffering all day with an awful headache.
“That’s because it’s empty,” said Nelly. “You would feel better if you had something in it.”
* * *“What do you love most about me,” a husband asked his wife. “My tremendous athletic ability or my superior intellect?”
“What I love most about you,” responded the man’s wife, “is your enormous sense of humour.”
* * *“What has 24 feet, green eyes and a black body?”
“I don’t know – what?”
“I don’t know, either, but you’d better pick it off[88] your neck.”
* * *Her husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months yet she stayed by his bedside every single day.
When he came to, he motioned for her to come nearer. As she sat by him, he said, “You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired,[89] you were there to support me. When my business fell, you were there. When I got shot,[90] you were by my side. When we lost the house, you gave me support. When my health started failing, you were still by my side. Well, now that I think about it, I think you bring me bad luck!”
* * *A woman was chatting with her next-door neighbour. “I feel really good today. I started out this morning with an act of unselfish generosity. I gave a five pound bill to a bum.”
“You gave a bum five whole pounds?[91] That’s a lot of money to just give away. What did your husband say about it?”
“Oh, he thought it was the proper thing to do. He said, ‘Thanks.’”
* * *A woman was leaving a cafе` after her morning coffee when she noticed a most unusual funeral procession approaching the nearby cemetery. A long black hearse was followed by a second long black hearse about 50 feet behind. Behind the second hearse was a solitary woman walking a very mean-looking dog on a leash. Behind that were 200 women walking single file.
The woman couldn’t stand the curiosity. She respectfully approached the woman walking the dog and said, “I am so sorry for your loss, and I know now is a bad time to disturb you, but I’ve never seen a funeral like this. Whose funeral is it?”
The woman replied, “Well, that first hearse is for my husband.”
“What happened to him?”
The woman replied, “My dog attacked and killed him.”
She inquired further, “Well, who is in the second hearse?”
The woman answered, “My mother-in-law. She was trying to help my husband when the dog turned on her.[92]”
A poignant and thoughtful moment of silence passes between the two women.
“Can I borrow the dog?”
“Get in line.[93]”
* * *Grandpa and granddaughter were sitting talking when she asked, “Did God make you, Grandpa?”
“Yes, God made me,” the grandfather answered.
A few minutes later, the little girl asked him, “Did God make me too?”
“Yes, He did,” the older man answered.
For a few minutes, the little girl seemed to be studying her grandpa, as well as her own reflection in the mirror, while her grandfather wondered what was running through her mind.
At last she spoke up. “You know, Grandpa,” she said, “God’s doing a lot better job lately.”
* * *Teacher: Didn’t you promise to behave?
Little Johnny: Yes, sir.
Teacher: And didn’t I promise to punish you if you didn’t?
Little Johnny: Yes, sir, but since I broke my promise,[94] you didn’t have to keep yours.
* * *Teacher: Little Johnny, how can one person make so many stupid mistakes in one day?
Little Johnny: I get up early.
* * *One fine day in Ireland, a guy is out golfing and gets up to the 16th hole. He tees up and cranks one.
Unfortunately, it goes into the woods on the side of the way.
He goes looking for his ball and comes across this little guy with a huge knot[95] on his head and the golf ball lying right beside him. “Goodness,” says the golfer, and then proceeds to revive the poor little guy.
Upon awakening, the little guy says, “Well, you caught me fair and square.[96] I am a magician. I will grant you three wishes.”
The man says, “I can’t take anything from you, I’m just glad I didn’t hurt you too badly,” and walks away. Watching the golfer depart, the magician says, “Well, he was a nice enough guy, and he did catch me, so I have to do something for him. I’ll give him the three things that I would want. I’ll give him unlimited money, a great golf game, and a great sex life.”
Well, a year goes past (as they often do in jokes like this) and the same golfer is out golfing on the same course at the 16th hole. He gets up and hits one into the same woods and goes off losing for his ball. When he finds the ball he sees the same little guy and asks how he is doing.
The magician says, “I’m fine, and might I ask how your golf game is?”
The golfer says, “It’s great! I always win.”
“I did that for you,” responds the magician. “And might I ask how your money is holding out?”
“Well, now that you mention it, every time I put my hand in my pocket, I pull out a hundred dollar bill,” he replied.
The magician smiles and says, “I did that for you. And might I ask how your sex life is?”
Now the golfer looks at him and says, “Well, maybe once or twice a week.”
Floored[97] the magician stammers, “Once or twice a week?”
The golfer looks at him sheepishly and says, “Well, that’s not too bad for a Catholic priest in a small parish.”
* * *“Would you mind telling me, Doctor,” Bob asked, “how you detect a mental deficiency in somebody who appears completely normal?”
“Nothing is easier,” he replied. “You ask him a simple question which everyone should answer with no trouble. If he hesitates, that puts you on the track.[98]”
“What sort of question?”
“Well, you might ask him, ‘Captain Cook[99] made three trips around the world and died during one of them. Which one?’ “
Bob thought for a moment, and then said with a nervous laugh, “You wouldn’t happen to have another example, would you? I must confess, I don’t know much about history.”
* * *The little boy wasn’t getting good marks in school. One day he made the teacher quite surprised. He tapped her on the shoulder and said, “I don’t want to scare you, but my daddy says if I don’t get better grades… somebody is going to get a spanking[100]…”
* * *The devil challenged St. Peter to a baseball game. “How can you win, Satan?” asked St. Peter. “All the famous ballplayers are up here.”
“How can I lose?” answered Satan. “All the umpires are down there.”
* * *One day, Jesus and the Devil were both working on their computers. Jesus was typing away. The Devil was typing away.
Suddenly a huge blackout filled heaven and hell.
When the lights came back on, Jesus picked up right where he left off, but the Devil’s screen was black.
Satan says, “How could this happen? I did everything Jesus did!”
Then God says, “No, Jesus saves.[101]”
* * *Teacher: If you had one pound and you asked your father for another, how many pounds would you have?
Little Johnny: One pound.
Teacher (sadly): You don’t know your arithmetic.
Little Johnny (sadly): You don’t know my father.
* * *The proud young mother was discussing with her husband what they should call the new baby. “I’ve made up my mind,” she declared firmly, “we’ll call her Penelope.” The husband didn’t like the name at all, but he decided to be subtle about it.[102]
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