Chapter One
Becky and Her Friends Play a Funny Card Game They Invent For Charity in Front of an Audience of Students

One evening, Becky had another of the wacky conversations she enjoyed so much with a friend of hers. This time it was Gary. She said, "Imagine if people could cast spells on other people like they do in Harry Potter, so we could turn people into chocolate bars and things."

Gary said, smiling, "Oh imagine if you did that to someone who was sitting in a chair. Imagine if someone came in and sat on the chair without realising there was a chocolate bar there! It might squash and melt all over them. Ugh!"

Becky said, "Imagine if they could still talk. They'd yell out when the person sat on them. They might say, 'Oy, get off, Heffalump! That hurts!'"

Gary said with a laugh, "That would give the person sitting there a fright, suddenly hearing a yell of protest from under their bottom! If they didn't know people could be turned into chocolate bars, they'd probably think they must be sitting on a ghost. They might jump up and run away."

Becky said, "Hey, those spells could be a great weapon in war! All our side would have to do would be to turn all the soldiers on the other side into cream cakes or something. Then our soldiers could all rush across the lines and eat them!"

Gary said, "But what if the enemy turned our soldiers into something first! They might turn them into something really useful to them, like computers or washing machines or printers, or knives and forks or bowls. Then they might take them all home and sell them."

Becky said, "I don't know if many people would want them if they talked. Imagine turning a washing machine on and hearing a voice from inside it saying, 'Oh, you're not asking me to wash your clothes again! I'm fed up of doing that, and it seems I'm condemned to wash them for the rest of my life, you scumbag!'"

Gary said, "If the people who'd bought them from the soldiers who'd captured them didn't know they used to be people, they might not dare use them again! They might think there were ghosts inside them and get a priest to exorcise them, or sell them off cheaply to someone else, hoping they diddn't talk during the sale and put people off buying them!"

Becky said, "Imagine if ordinary body parts talked, like legs. If you put a tight sock on, your leg might say in a high-pitched voice, 'Ouch! That sock's too tight! Put a more comfortable one on me!'"

Gary said, "Wow, it might criticise you in public! Imagine if you tripped over something and it shouted, 'Oy, clumsy, watch where you're going!'"

Becky said, "Imagine if all your legs and arms could talk, and they had a conversation while you were talking to someone else, and you could hardly hear the person you were talking to over the sound of your arms and legs talking."

Gary replied, "Imagine if theirs could talk too, and they were all having a conversation with yours while you were trying to talk, so you had to shout over them to be heard. Imagine if they recognised other arms and legs in the street when they saw them and shouted hello to them."

Becky said, "You'd end up shouting, 'Shut up leg!' and things like that all the time. And then if you met people who didn't know some people's legs could talk, they'd think someone else must have just spoken and that you were going mad for thinking it was your leg, especially if you whacked your leg to punish it."

Gary said, "Imagine if you were in an important lecture and your legs and arms kept criticising what the lecturer was saying, or asking the time, or saying they were bored and wanted to go. Or imagine if, say, a history lecturer made a mistake and said something happened in 1814 when it really happened in 1815, and you decided to keep quiet about it, but your leg chirped, 'You got it wrong! It was 1815!'"

Becky replied, "If it was that clever, I'd take my shoe and sock off, hold my foot above my computer keyboard and tell my leg to write my essays for me!"

Gary said, "It would probably complain that you were holding it in an awkward position."

Becky said, "Imagine if your legs started complaining about you all the time, saying things like, 'It's a bit much to have to carry someone as heavy as you around! Why don't you lose a bit of weight? I think it's time we at least got to sit down for a rest!' And imagine if they had conversations where one complained about you and the other agreed."

Gary said, "And imagine if our stomachs joined in, talking in deep voices, saying things like, 'I wish I didn't have so much fat around me, but he will keep feeding me burgers and fries!'"

Becky said, "Imagine if you were trying to impress a girlfriend on a first date and it did that, or she took you home to her parents for the first time and you wanted to impress them, but it kept complaining like that!"

Gary replied, "It would be funny if their stomachs were talking too, and they all started agreeing that we all fed them too much fatty food."

Becky said, "Imagine if arms and legs cried loudly if you hurt them. If you fractured your wrist, the doctors would put a plaster on it, and you'd all hear sobbing from underneath it. It might cry every day for weeks, and you might have to spend a long time trying to comfort it, or quieten it down in important meetings and things."

Gary said, "Or sometimes arms and legs might feel playful. People might sometimes have to argue with them if they kept talking when they were trying to go to sleep and things."

Becky said, "Oh, I should think your legs and arms would let you at least go to sleep in meetings, at least if they're the kind of meetings I've heard some people have to go to, where some people just waffle on for ages about things most people there don't need to know! After all, they'd probably want the best for you."

Gary laughed. That hadn't been quite what he meant - he'd meant going to sleep at the times people are supposed to.

They often had a good time joking like that.

One day, after Becky and her friends had been larking around and making each other laugh by coming up with amusing ideas, they came up with the thought of doing a big charity event in the university, where they could joke around and get people to pay to watch.

They decided to publicise it by walking to lectures and around campus doing funny things that would intrigue people, telling them about the event if they looked curious or puzzled or asked what they were doing.

For instance, one of the group decided to go around for hours with a raw runner bean dangling from the corner of his mouth as if it was a cigarette. Another taped a pin to a piece of cardboard so she could pin it to her clothes, and stuck lots of fresh peas in a pattern on the cardboard instead of beads to make a big brooch. Then she decided to make another one and wear two. One of the friends stuck a post-it note on each of their cheeks advertising the event. Another one made a pointy hat out of paper and stuck a twig on top, so it was as if they had a spire sticking up several inches on top of their head. They stuck leaves and little flowers on the hat. That person was specially chosen to do that because they had a good memory, so whenever they went through doorways, they would remember to bend down so it didn't get knocked off; and they'd also remember to make sure they weren't too close behind someone when they did that, so no one would get bashed by a twig.

The friends who walked around campus doing funny things asked people beforehand to donate money to sponsor them for being daring enough to do them. They publicised what they were going to do on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere, and got quite a lot of money in sponsorship.

When they walked around the university campus wearing the funny things, each of them held a sign up that said that one of the funniest charity events people might ever see was going to happen in the sociology lecture theatre the following evening. They said the entry fee was three pounds, which would go to some charities. If anyone wanted to pay more to get in, they'd be very welcome, but it would be up to them.

If anyone stopped them and asked them why they were doing strange things, they would explain that they were a publicity stunt to help them advertise the charity event, and ask the people if they'd like to come along. A lot of them said they would, and the following night, the lecture theatre was quite full.

They also advertised the event by putting funny posters all around the university, that they'd made by playing around with images on the computer. They had pictures on them, and underneath, there was writing saying, "This is an attention-attracting device to advertise a fun charity event in the sociology lecture theatre." Then the time and date were written.

Some of those pictures were made by playing around with some countries' national flags, mixing other pictures with them or putting them next to them on the posters. They ended up with an American flag that looked as if it was being eaten by a horse, a French flag, part of which looked as if it was growing a beard, A Canadian flag that looked as if carrots were growing out of it, and a German flag with a big daisy in the middle, that looked as if a woman was about to throw a bucket of water over it to water it. They also asked permission from a couple of lecturers and put photos of them up on some posters, one looking as if he was eating a big flower, and one looking as if cabbages were growing out of his ears.

Other posters had surreal images on them, such as a kettle with legs chasing a schoolboy, a daffodil with hands holding a stick of rock and bending its head to suck it, a car almost suspended in the air above a driveway with just two of its wheels perched on ice-creams for support, and other things.

They got a lot of money from all the donations made by people sponsoring them to walk around campus looking strange, and the charity event itself made a lot of money too. Almost everyone who went there had a lot of fun watching what went on.

Early on the evening of the charity event, Becky and her friends went to the lecture theatre where they were holding it. One stood at the door taking the entry fee.

The charity event itself was to be a special funny card game they'd had a laugh inventing themselves, where all those playing had to put on amusing little acts for the audience. What they would have to do would depend on which card came up.

The idea was that as many of the cards would be dealt out as would mean everyone had an equal number. Becky and four of her friends were playing the game, so they would have ten cards each. The rules were a bit complicated, so they had them in front of them to remind themselves what they were, even though they'd made them up themselves. That was because there was a different funny act for each card number, and they would have to have remembered what they all were if they hadn't been written down.

For example, someone who was told to do the funny act that the rules said had to be done when a 5 came up would have to pretend they loved eating some non-edible thing they chose, such as a hairbrush, and rave about how yummy it was to eat, trying their best to be convincing ... without actually eating one of course.

The funny act wouldn't be done by the person who picked out the card from their share of them, but by the person to their left. Sometimes they would join them, but the main act would most of the time be done by the person on their left.

One of Becky's friends stood by the door for much of the evening, taking bets from the audience on how long it would be before the people playing the game ran out of ideas for funny acts to do, or how long it would be before any one individual did, and they had to be helped to think up more by the others. If anyone won a bet, they wouldn't get any money back, because it was going to charity; their reward would be the satisfaction of knowing they'd guessed correctly, and the right to brag about it a bit to their friends.

The rules said that if anyone couldn't think of something to do when they got a number, they had to cry like a baby, and that would be a signal for the others to help them. Or an audience member could pay a pound for the charities the money was being raised for, and then they could go to the front and do the funny act instead that the rule said had to be done.

The people playing the game were Becky, and her friends Luke, Sharon, Mandy and Gary.

Becky dealt out the cards. The rules said the person to the left of the dealer started the game. That was Gary. First of all he picked out a 2. He put it in the middle, and told everyone what it was, as the rules said had to be done, and read out to the audience what the person who got the 2 was going to have to do.

The person on his left was Sharon, so she had to do the funny act, which was to pretend to be a radio DJ trying to introduce a song by saying a little bit about the artist, but suddenly forgetting all about them, but still wanting to say something, so she made something up, the more absurd the better. Or she could pretend to be a talk radio host introducing a famous guest, but getting the details about them ridiculously wrong.

Sharon said, putting on a deep voice, "Here's an old song by Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights, a song first written in 1546 about the ghost of Anne Boleyn in the Tower of London, who'd perhaps forgotten her name by then in the song and thought she was Catherine Howard who was also executed, which is why she keeps calling herself Cathy. The song's about her trying to escape from the tower where she's been held as a ghost for years. It was written to commemorate the anniversary of her execution by the evil Sheriff of Nottingham."

"Ugh, that's a bit gruesome! Are you always like that?" shouted one audience member.

"Sorry. Only on weekdays," joked Sharon, blushing a bit.

Then it was Sharon's turn to pick a card. She picked a 4, put it in the middle, and told the audience what it was and what the person to the left of the one with the 4 would have to do. She read:

"The one with the card says two words, as random as they like, and the one to the left has to make up a little story that connects the two."

She said, "Scooter, television."

Mandy was to her left. She was silent for several seconds while she thought. Then her little story went:

"Once when I was little, I drove my little scooter right through a television! It just somehow opened to let me in. When I was inside it, I found myself in a set of studios where people were making all the films and programmes people see on their televisions. In the one at the end on the left there was a man doing a weather forecast for BBC1, and in the next one there were people talking about politics for BBC2, and then there were people acting out adverts for ITV, and then there was someone reading the news for Channel four, and then there were people making a film for Channel five, and then loads of other people on other channels, all talking at once. They were all so close together I couldn't understand a word any of them were saying. I thought that maybe you'd have to press the button to select an individual channel to just hear and see one thing at once and understand it. But I couldn't reach them, since I was on the inside of the television and the buttons were on the outside. No one noticed me as I drove my scooter through the tiny studios. Then I went out the back of the television and ended up back in my parents' house."

Some of the audience laughed, while a few said things like, "You twit!" But they said it good-naturedly.

Then it was Mandy's turn to pick a card. She picked a 7. She put it down in the middle of the table, told everyone in the audience what it was, and read out the rule for 7 that said:

"The person with the card has to pick a famous historical figure, and whatever the person to their left thinks of the person, they have to pretend they were one of the best people who ever lived, and explain why they were such a hero. Making up things about them is permissible."

Then Mandy chose Vlad the Impaler.

None of them knew much at all about Vlad the Impaler, apart from that he was a monarch who lived in what's now Romania in the middle ages, and loved impaling his dinner guests and other people on spikes for some reason.

Luke was to Mandy's left, so it was his turn to do an act. He cringed, making a funny pained face; but then he smiled, saying, "That's cruel!" He thought for a few seconds, and then said,

"OK. Not many people know it, but Vlad the Impaler stopped Europe from being blown up by a massive nuclear bomb in the middle ages. He was a wonderful caring man, and we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him. None of us would be. You see, for years there had been a network of evil people working on technology way in advance of its time. They ate burgers and fries that they invented centuries before anyone else did; they had modern washing machines and radios, and most importantly, they were making a gigantic nuclear bomb to blow everyone in the known world up.

"They'd turned against the world after they offered their burgers to a village of people but they all said they tasted horrid; and they told them about their radios, but they laughed and sneered and said it was impossible to make things that would pick up signals being broadcast hundreds or thousands of miles away; and the villagers rejected their washing machines, saying they couldn't possibly do what the men claimed they could. That was true at the time, since electricity hadn't been invented, but the men were working on that. But they turned into evil sociopaths when their inventions were rejected and laughed at, and they decided everyone in the world was brainless and stupid and ought to die. So they started making their nuclear bomb. But Vlad the Impaler found out. He wanted to save the world, so he impaled all the men involved in the evil scheme on spikes till they died, and destroyed their nuclear device. He really is one of the biggest heroes of all time!

"Although we had to wait several hundred years for other people to come up with the idea of washing machines, radios, electricity and junk food, it was a price worth paying for the survival of the planet. We owe it all to that wonderful, wonderful man, Vlad."

Then Luke gave a sigh of relief as it was his turn to pick one of his own cards, and sit back while someone else had a turn. He picked a 10. Becky was the one who had to put on an act that time.

Luke put down the 10, and told the audience what the rule was for that:

"The one with the card makes up a few nonsense words, and the one to the left pretends to interpret them.

"OK: Quithy quothy quothering stet!"

Becky pretended to be lost in admiration for a few seconds while she thought of something, and then said:

"Luke is using ingenious short-hand to express one of the most profound mathematical equations ever written! I wouldn't want to explain the complex algebraic formula it represents, because it would take too long and no one would understand it. But it's a far more exciting and important equation than the one Einstein came up with when he discovered his theory of relativity. This will shake the world! It will change everything! It will improve the world more than we could ever imagine, leading to a cure for cancer, new passenger aircraft that can fly at 3000 miles an hour, without even creating a sonic boom, and new drought-resistant plants that'll grow in all the countries where there are food shortages because there isn't enough rain, which will even absorb all the pollution from the air and spit it out powerfully from the bottom of their roots so it goes deep down into the earth and never comes back again; and they might even talk, so they can tell their owners when they need watering."

Luke interrupted and said with a laugh, "Come on, there are at least a Few limits to my equation! Don't get Too carried away!"

Becky decided to stop there, since she was running out of things to say anyway.

Gary was the only one who hadn't done an act then. It was time for Becky to pick a card from the ones she had. She picked an ace.

Gary was lucky - the rule for what someone had to do when the ace came up was the easiest one. Becky read:

"Make a couple of animal noises in combination, as if you're a cross between two animals."

Gary said, "Woof quack! Quack Woof! Quook waf! Quoof whack!"

Then he did the best imitation of a bark he could a few times, and then his best imitation of a duck, and then tried to alternate them, going faster and faster till he got muddled up and started saying nonsense syllables the way he might if he was saying a tongue twister very fast.

Then he said, "That was a duckdog. If you've never seen one of those, ... just be grateful!"

The people playing the card game with him grinned, and the audience seemed happy.

That was the end of the first round.

Since each person playing had started with ten cards, they now had nine more funny acts to do each.

It was Gary's turn to pick a card out of the ones he had again. He picked a 5, and read the rule about what funny act the one to the left of the person with the 5 had to do:

"Think of something non-edible, and pretend you love eating it. Rave enthusiastically about how good it is to eat and what you do with it."

Sharon was on Gary's left, and she started:

"I just adore my old school dinners! Most kids called them names like 'dustbin dregs' or 'pest controllers' poison'; but I'd eat them every day for the rest of my life if I could!"

The others laughed, but protested, "Hey, that's cheating! School dinners might not be nice, but at least you're supposed to be able to eat them! You're supposed to choose something people genuinely can't eat!"

Sharon smilingly protested in return, "You didn't taste them! I'm sure there were lots of days when I heard people say in disgust, 'I can't eat that!'"

They chuckled, and she continued, "Besides, I'm talking about eating my old ones now, say if some leftovers were still around, and someone dug them out of the bin or a landfill site. Yum yum! I'd be so happy to have them, I'd not only gobble most of them up, but I'd keep some under my clothes for later when I was hungry again."

"Oh yuck!" the others said, grinning.

Then it was Sharon's turn to put a card on the table. She put down a queen. She told the audience what it was, and read them the rule about the funny act that had to be done when someone put down the queen:

"The person with the card asks up to five general knowledge questions, and the one to their left gives nonsense answers to each one."

Mandy was to Sharon's left, so she'd have to make up the answers. But Sharon would have to think too, since she had to make up the questions.

First she asked, "Who invented the computer?"

Mandy replied, "A Roman soldier who was bored while he was standing around with nothing to do at Hadrian's Wall. If his wife and family had been there, we'd never have computers today, because he'd have spent his time touring around the wall with them, or chatting and entertaining them and things; but his family were in Rome, so he had nothing to help him wile away the lonely days; and between bouts of running around to keep warm, he sat down and had a go at inventing something, coming up with the computer."

Sharon said, "You're correct. Now what are the ingredients of lemonade?"

Mandy thought for a few seconds and then said, "I know it's a quarter peanut butter. In the best lemonades, they use crunchy peanut butter, and chop the nuts really really fine by hand. Then they use cheese, tomato sauce, Plasticine, chicken, ivy and grass, Brussels sprouts, a touch of brandy, and lots and lots of cold tea."

Everyone else on her team made disgusted faces, and then grinned.

Sharon said, "You're right again. Well done. Now what was the first radio programme ever broadcast?"

Mandy twisted a lock of her hair round her finger as she thought for several seconds, and then she said:

"It was called, 'What do you think of radio then?' and it was broadcast from London to the whole of Britain to coincide with the coronation of Queen Victoria. While she was taking part in the solemn coronation ceremony in church, the radio programme presenters wanted to test out all the sound effects, records and microphones to make sure everything worked. So they had people telling jokes and blowing raspberries, snippets of funny records by artists like George Formby, funny noises, whistles and hooters at unexpected times, cheerful little jingles that must have been made for other programmes, trailers for comedy programmes that would be on later, and a telephone conversation between the DJ and a famous comedian in America.

"Queen Victoria wanted to secretly listen to the programme, so she took a little radio in to her coronation ceremony hidden in her clothes, and listened to it with a small earpiece she hoped wouldn't be seen. But she couldn't keep from laughing all throughout the service, even when the archbishop asked her to solemnly promise to serve her people faithfully.

"The officials thought something was a bit strange, and in private afterwards, they sternly asked her why she'd laughed so much. She didn't want to confess what she'd done, so she lied and said she thought someone must have spiked her dressing room with laughing gas. But she got worried when they said they'd phone the police who'd do a criminal investigation. She told them not to worry, saying there couldn't have been much laughing gas - it had all gone by the time she went back after the service; she said she knew that because she hadn't laughed at all then. She really hadn't; the radio programme had just finished, and she felt ashamed for having laughed all through the service - too ashamed to laugh any more. Still, she was glad she'd listened to the programme, and was a great fan of radio from that time on.

"They decided not to make a fuss about her laughing during her coronation after all, in case lots more people heard about it so it became an embarrassment for the country; so she got away with it. That encouraged her to hide secret little radios in her clothes a lot from then on, especially if she was going somewhere to do something she thought would be boring."

Sharon said, "You're impressively knowledgeable about these things!"

Her next question was, "What would happen to you if you got too close to a wormhole? You know, those things that some scientists believe exist in space that they think can transport things quickly to different dimensions."

Mandy was silent for a few seconds, staring into space while she thought of an answer, and then said:

"If you get too close to a wormhole, it sucks you in, and then flings you out the other side with such force you can fly for miles, or even thousands or millions of miles before you land. They travel around the universe sucking things in and flinging them out again. They even come here! Sometimes they bounce at a leisurely pace along the street, seeming to be blowing gently in the wind; but anyone who gets too close to them gets sucked in really quickly.

"I got sucked into one once. It had stopped right outside my house. It was huge! I wondered what it was, so I went right up to it, and it sucked me in and hurled me out somewhere I'd never been. Luckily for me I landed in a huge vat of ice-cream in the garden of some really obese people who were having a barbecue. I was really relieved to land on something soft! If I hadn't, that wormhole could have been dangerous! I apologised to the people for ruining their pudding though. They said it was OK and I could eat the ice-cream I'd landed in if I liked, so I did. I needed a good meal after my long journey; it turned out that I was in America! It had only taken a few minutes or so to get there!

"It was nice exploring America for a little while after that; but I didn't know how to get back. The wormhole was nowhere in sight, so I couldn't go back in that, and it might have sent me somewhere completely different from home anyway. But I managed to raise the money for my plane fare back easily in the end, because the family whose garden I landed in told the media what had happened, and then lots of television channels and newspapers wanted to interview me about it, and they paid me.

"When I got back, I started investigating wormholes, and found a secret diary of Christopher Columbus. It said he discovered America by being flung there by a wormhole all of a sudden. He realised he was on a different continent, made a boat and came back again, after exploring. But he felt sure no one would believe him if he told them he'd got there in a single minute after a wormhole had loomed up in front of him and sucked him through it, so he made up a story about going there by ship.

"Wormholes can even hurl people into space! If we ever find intelligent life on another planet, we'll probably think it's alien life; but really the people there will probably have lived here once, but will have been flung there by wormholes; they'll have been the lucky ones who landed on a planet with an atmosphere and set to work making it a decent place to live in, instead of just landing somewhere in the middle of space."

Sharon said, "Scary! But it's nice to hear your personal experience, as well as getting a correct answer to the question."

Her last question was, "What's the surface of the moon made of?"

Mandy said, "Tulips. Not living ones. Once the moon had a great atmosphere, and weather conditions were fantastic, and the soil was really fertile, and tulips grew so densely together they all got squashed up really really tight and died. But they were squashed up so tightly together it's possible to walk on them and run and jump around, and even build houses, without them collapsing. Astronauts brought what they thought was moon rock back to earth with them, but really it's squashed-up tulips, packed so close together they just look and feel hard like rock, although anyone who examines them closely will discover they're all fossils of bunches of tulips. If someone tried to pull a bit apart, they'd find it was quite easy; and if they carried on, they'd be able to peel off individual ancient fossilised tulip petals, and be able to tell what they were."

Everyone was still enjoying themselves as those playing the game played on and on. Even students who liked nothing better than to spend their evenings in the bar stayed that evening to listen. They were having fun.

It was Mandy's turn to put one of her cards on the table. She put down a 3. She said what number it was, and read out the rule about what had to be done when a 3 came up to the audience:

"The one with the card says a few words of nonsense, which the person to their left has to use as the first line of a nonsense poem, and make up three more lines."

"A jelly and a belly had a talk about the weather."

Luke had to make up the other lines, since he was to her left. He had a think, and then said:

"They piled up the raindrops till there were almost twenty-three
Some were made of metal, and some were made of leather
And some were like little kittens they could cuddle on their knee."

Then it was time for Luke to put down one of his cards; it was Becky's go again, as she was the person on his left. Luke put down a 6. He said what it was, and read out the rule about what Becky would have to do:

"Pretend you're an animal or insect walking or flying around the flat or house of someone in the room, or somewhere else, such as somewhere famous like a treasured old library, or the House of Commons, or a banqueting hall the Queen's due to sit down to eat in soon with a lot of guests. Imagine how you might think about what's there, and tell us what you're thinking."

Becky smiled and said: "I'm a magpie flying around the Queen's bedroom. Wow, there's so much lovely jewellery here! I think I'll nick lots of little bits and take them back to my nest! I might even make a bigger nest to put it all in! Actually, there's a lovely big bed here I could use as a ready-made nest! I'll just settle down on it. Oh yes, it's far more comfortable than my old nest! I'm going to put all the bits of jewellery in it and make my home here! Then I'm going to go and tell all my friends and relatives, and they can all fly through this nice open window and come and live in this big bed nest too!"

They all smiled. Then it was Becky's turn to put down a card. She put down a 9. She read out the rule for what happened when someone got a 9:

"The person with the card has to pick a subject, and the one to their left tells a funny story about it, true or one they make up on the spur of the moment."

Gary was the one who had to tell the story. Becky said, "Curtains."

After a few seconds' thought, Gary said:

"There was a time when I thought about getting a job straightaway when I left school instead of coming to university. I had a job interview I was looking forward to one day. But with only hours to go before it, I suddenly realised all my decent clothes were in the wash. I had other clothes, but they looked a bit tatty or had holes in them, so I didn't want to wear those, or get my best ones out the wash and go in dirty smelly ones. So I unhooked a curtain from off my bedroom window, and wrapped it round me to wear that. I cut a couple of holes in it so my arms could go through, hoping my mum wouldn't mind too much. But apart from that, I just left it how it was and went to the interview in that.

"The interviewer stared at me, but resisted asking about it till halfway through the interview. Then he said, 'That curtain's a bit short, isn't it! It doesn't even reach to your knees! You look cold, man! Why didn't you wrap two curtains around you to come here?'

"I said as my teeth chattered that I'd felt embarrassed enough wearing one. He said, 'Nonsense boy! Have another!' It happened that there were curtains at the windows of the room the interviews were being held in. He spent a while unhooking one and draped it over my knees. He told me he wanted it back at the end of the interview.

"He didn't comment again about the curtains. He just asked me the other interview questions, although he was looking at me strangely, as if he thought I was a twit. At the end of the interview, I gave him back the curtain he'd lent me, thanked him and walked out.

"I didn't get the job. To this day I wonder whether it was because I went in wearing a curtain, or maybe because he thought I was rude because I didn't help him hook the one he gave me back up at the window again after the interview; I was on the bus home when I realised it would have been more polite if I'd helped him."

The others laughed and said things like, "I can't believe that really happened!"

Gary said they were right; he'd just made it up.

Then it was Gary's turn to put a card on the table. He put down a king. Then he read the rule about what the person on his left would have to do:

"Pretend you've written what you somehow imagine is a great book or scientific paper, and you're trying to persuade a publisher to publish it by telling them what it's all about. Or you're going for a job interview, and there's some very obvious reason why you couldn't possibly do the job, but you're convinced you should have it. The person whose card was put down pretends to be the publisher or interviewer, and they act as if they're very impressed with your idea, or they take it very seriously and ask questions very solemnly about it."

So it was going to be a double act between him and Sharon.

Sharon started off: "Mr publisher, I'm so glad you've given me this interview after you got my book in the post. As you can tell, it's about life and times in the army, written from the point of view of a muesli bar in an army ration pack. It starts off as it's about to be eaten. Then it dies as the first mouthful's taken. The description of its life before then takes up the first half page, and the rest of the 300 pages are written as if by the ghost of the muesli bar, and they're a massive tirade against the cruelty of eating muesli bars, since they have just as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as anyone on earth. The protest against eating them's very repetitive, - if it wasn't it would only take up three pages, - but it needs to be repetitive so people will take it in, and so it will fill up the whole book."

Gary, pretending to be the publisher, said, "It sounds like a very interesting book indeed! I shall enjoy reading it all."

Sharon said, "Good. I intend to write a whole series of these books. My next book's going to be about the life and times of a sausage in an army ration pack. It's going to be exactly the same as the one about the muesli bar, only the words muesli bar will be changed to the word sausage, since it's about how the poor sausage deserves as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as everyone on earth."

Gary replied, in as serious a voice as he could, "I think your compassion is admirable. Do you feel this way about all food?"

Sharon said, "Not all food; not the food I eat personally. It's the food in a rectangular or cylindrical shape that needs to be saved from death by the greedy heartless masses. It's that food I'm pleading for, because food in that shape could be said to be in the image of human beings, because it vaguely resembles the shape of one, although naturally it hasn't got arms and legs and doesn't contain any human parts - or at least I hope it doesn't. When I carve meat I always make sure I don't carve any of it in a rectangular shape; if I do by accident, I can't eat it, and I have to consider it worthy of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness just as much as I'm worthy of it. I set it free in the garden and wish it well, blessing it with a farewell poem I make up. My books don't contain information about that; they're just written as if the ghosts of the foods I write about are protesting about the unfairness of their fate."

Gary said, "Well I'm very pleased to have made your acquaintance. I'll be very glad to have your book published, and I'm sure it'll be very successful. Goodbye now."

Every three quarters of an hour or so, the team stopped the game for several minutes and told the audience they had time to phone friends if they wanted and recommend they come to watch too. Quite a few did, and the lecture hall was soon full of audience members who all paid something as they came in, so they raised more money for charity. Some audience members left, not sharing the sense of humour of the people playing the game but thinking they were just nuts, but others took their places and enjoyed themselves.

It was Sharon's turn to put down a card. She put a jack on the table. The rule for what was supposed to happen then was the most difficult to remember in the game, because the instructions were the longest. Sharon read it out to the audience, after looking at it and saying,

"Blimey the rule for this is complicated! Or at least long. ... I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised by that, since I helped to make it up.

"OK: The one with the card insults the one to their left, and they have to insult them back, with silly insults that don't really make sense as insults. They can exchange up to about a dozen each.

"Note: There's a special rule for this one to stop it getting out of hand: If someone insults someone else with an insult that sounds too much like something genuinely insulting to them, the one being insulted or someone else playing has the right to appeal, and if a majority of game players agree, the person who said the insulting thing has to do a forfeit. There are several possible options for forfeits, and they can choose one:

"A. They make a noise that sounds like a train going through a level crossing, starting with the level crossing siren, and then doing the gates going down, the train coming towards it out of the distance, bibbing its hooter, and then going away into the distance again.

"B. They sing a nursery rhyme in the highest-pitched voice they can.

"C. They sing as much of their favourite pop song as they can remember at double the speed it's supposed to go at.

"D. They spend several seconds imitating the sound of a really noisy eater who's thoroughly enjoying a bowl of soup.

"E. They imitate the sound of a young child having a tantrum in a toy shop who's getting worked up because their parents won't give them a toy.

"F. They pretend they're in a radio play, so without moving, they act out the sound effects of someone who's really unfit, who's on their way to something important that's going to start soon so they have to get there quickly, and they've just run for a bus and they're really out of breath; and then they lurch onto the bus, only to find it full, and they're desperate to sit down, so they ask a person for a seat, but the person in it doesn't feel like getting up, so they beg and plead and then the person does get up; but then they feel desperate for refreshment and get out a bottle of drink, but spill some of it down themselves.

"G. They pretend to be a politician who's just made an unpopular speech, who's pleading for silence and respect from a crowd who've begun to throw rotten eggs."

Mandy and Sharon would have to insult each other. Mandy started off. They put on loud angry voices. The conversation went:

Mandy: "So I have to put up with having to talk to You, do I, you dishwasher full of cups with faded dog pictures on and dirty cutlery?"

Sharon: "Oh be quiet, you monstrous barrel of broccoli, dog hair and mustard seeds!"

Mandy: "Be quiet yourself, you whose grandad was a pot of potatoes and whose mum was just a big cup of tea!"

Sharon: "Well that's better than your mum! She's just a little cup, without the tea!"

Mandy: "Well it's better to be little than giant-sized like yours; your mum's so big she could reach up and snatch aeroplanes out of the sky! That's plain dangerous!"

Sharon: "Your mum's so lazy, she employs a servant even to just come and turn the radio on for her!"

Mandy: "Oh shut up you lemon-scented great vat of soaking tomato peelings and custard!"

Sharon: "That's better than you, you nibbled-on rose bush covered in seaweed and old dead sardines!"

Mandy: "You giant fried gooseberry, covered in the sauces of a thousand used old dinner plates!"

Sharon: "You can talk, you monstrous Brussels sprout, covered in the remains of fossilised breakfast cereals dug up from inside the skeletons of ancient people in the ground!"

Mandy: "You're nothing but a great unnatural growth of cat fur and a pile of old dried leaves!"

Sharon: "Well you're just a nothing; you're such a big nothing, you tried to make friends with a vacuum and it chased you out of town, saying you must be an inferior alien species of nothing, not fit to associate with! You had to beg on your nothing-knees and plead with your nothing-voice before it even recognised you as a nothing worth saying nothing to!"

Mandy: "I won't let you get away with this, you upside-down mixing bowl poised to pour your contents over the head of anyone who goes near you, full of the sweat of a thousand old Victorian shoes and a mixture of gravy and ancient Roman public bath water that's been used by a thousand dirty Romans!"

Sharon: "You cracked old chimney full of soot and grime and squashed Eckles cakes!"

Mandy: "I'll sue you for that, you muddy pile of stone-age tools, all of them broken!"

Sharon: "You toad skin full of mushy peas and mouldy raisins!"

Mandy: "you're like a rat's tail wound around a pile of pond weed in a puddle full of watered-down cheese spread! Anyone who goes near you will run away in horror and get to another continent before they dare stop!"

Sharon: "Well that's better than you, you wooden box of all that is evil, come specially to earth to haunt poor little children! I can hear their screams from my room at night as you go round the country blowing rotten egg-breath on them at night and cackling to scare them!"

Mandy: "You wretched loaf of stale old bread, covered in cold mashed-up semolina! You're too yucky even for a school to cook you to give to the kids for dinner!"

Sharon: "You fungus-ridden turnip bed full of broken glass and dead squirrels!"

Mandy: "Well that's better than eating dead squirrels and broken glass for breakfast every morning like you do! I see you every day snatching the squirrels out of the trees and chomping them up raw right there and then!"

Sharon: "Well at least I don't eat wasps, and smell of old socks and sound just like a dentist's drill when I sing like you do!"

Becky thought that sounded just a little bit too much like a real insult - or at least a bit of it did; and she shouted, "Hey! Forfeit!"

The others agreed that it was time for punishment, looking forward to it. Becky started banging her fist on the table in rhythm as she shouted, "Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit!"

Soon the whole audience was joining in, shouting in delight while stamping their feet or clapping their hands in rhythm, "Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit! Forfeit!"

Sharon shouted, "OK OK, I'll do a forfeit!"

Becky stood up and rang a bell she'd brought with her to get the audience's attention. They quietened down. Then the forfeit choices were read out again, and Sharon was asked to choose one.

She chose to do the first one, and made the sound of a level crossing and a train going through it. Some of the audience protested that they couldn't hear it well, possibly just saying that for a laugh; so the others playing the game told Sharon to go round to both sides of the lecture theatre and then to the back, and do the noise again in all those places till everyone heard it loud and clear.

The audience laughed as she did the noise in one place after another, and applauded her in the end.

After that it was Mandy's turn to put a card on the table. She put down an 8, and read out the rule:

"The person to the left of the one who puts down the card has to tell a story about an event in their childhood. It can be true or false. The others have to guess if it's true or false."

Luke had to do that. He said:

"When I was little, my dad bought a second-hand car. When he got home, he opened one of the back doors, and heard something little clang to the ground. He wondered if it was a screw or something; but when he looked, he discovered it was a pretty gold ring! It was woven together from very thin strands. He thought it must be valuable. He assumed it must have belonged to the man who owned the car before us, so he contacted him and asked him. The man said it might have been his, but that he wouldn't want it any more, because he'd decided to renounce worldly wealth and luxury and go and live in a little caravan in the woods to be close to nature. He suggested we keep it.

"Well neither my dad nor me felt like wearing it, so we decided it might be good to sell it and make lots of money. We took it to a valuer to find out how much it was worth. He examined it, and we noticed he had a kind of suspicious look on his face. Then he told us to go and sit in a little room he pointed to while he checked.

"We were sitting there, when all of a sudden the police came in and arrested my dad! They accused him of having stolen the ring, saying it belonged to a rich woman who'd been burgled a while ago. It turned out that the valuer had somehow recognised it and phoned the police while we were waiting. My dad protested that he'd just found the ring in his car and had phoned its previous owners, thinking it was theirs, trying to give it back to them, but they'd said they hadn't wanted it, because they'd renounced worldly wealth and luxury and were about to go to live in a cold caravan in a dark wood to be closer to nature.

"The police said they could check that story, and asked for the phone number of the previous car owner. They escorted me and my dad home, and he found the number and gave it to them. They rang the man up, and he said it was true. Then they said my dad was free to go, but went to arrest the other man.

"But the man said he hadn't even known about the ring when he'd sold the car, and that he thought it could perhaps have been somehow pushed into it by someone who'd come to fix his roof a few months earlier, who'd stood by the car for a while looking suspicious, perhaps because he thought police might have been after him and he wanted to get rid of the ring. The man told the police they could tell he wouldn't have stolen it, because they could come and see the little caravan in the cold dark woods he was about to start living in because he wanted to go back to nature and live like the animals.

"The police went to investigate, and decided he probably hadn't stolen it after all. I think they kept the ring after that, just in case they found out who had, or if any of them wanted to wear it sometimes or something."

That was the end of the story. The others on the team laughed, and said things like, "Come on, that can't possibly be true!"

Luke said they were right; he'd made it up.

It was back to being Becky's turn to do a funny act again. The group still hadn't run out of ideas, so they carried on playing as it grew dark. Becky spotted her mum in the audience - she'd just come in to watch the rest of the game after work before taking Becky home at the end of the evening. They waved to each other.

Luke put down another 8, so Becky had to make up a story too, and the others had to decide whether it was true or false.

Becky said, "Once when I was at school, our science teacher came in and said, 'Scientists have now discovered that sand is really finely crushed-up bits of carpet. They've found that there used to be really really thick-pile carpet under all the oceans, to make them a nice home for creatures that lived right at the bottom of the sea; but the constant movement of the sea and the constant pressure of all the water on top of it squashed and eroded it all so badly it was ruined and became billions of smithereens of ex-carpet, crushed up really really small. So when people make sandcastles on the beach, they're really making squashed carpet castles.'

"And then the teacher told us that scientists have decided to rename the oceans, giving them more technical-sounding names. He said there's a dispute among scientists about what to call them at the moment, but they're sure they'll clear it up soon.

"So he said that from the year 2023, the oceans will either be named after body parts, foods, or people's names. So they could be called things like Susan, Peter, John and Jane; or they could be called things like Marshmallow, Peanut, Chocolate and Popcorn; or they could be called things like Toenail, Finger, Nose and Stomach.

"That's what he told us."

Mandy grinned and said, "I can't believe a science teacher would say that! ... Well, not if he wanted to keep his job for long! ... Unless he was joking. I think the story's false."

Becky said she was right.

The game went on just as entertainingly, till after some time, the group of friends began to find it more difficult to think of ideas.

That wasn't before a few more rounds of story-telling and other amusing things though.

In one round, Luke put down a 4, and read out the rule for what the person on his left had to do when the 4 came up:

"The one with the card says two words, as random as they like, and the one to the left has to make up a little story that connects the two.

"OK: Car, cobwebs."

Becky had to tell a story that connected those two words! She came up with this:

"Once I saw a car drive right through a cobweb that a spider had made over a very quiet road. Then I saw a whole crowd of spiders jump onto it and crawl in through gaps where the door hinges are and things. Soon the driver stopped the car and leapt out, yelling about how his car was full of spiders, and that they'd started crawling on him!

"He wasn't far from home, and someone was watching who knew him, and they invited him in for a quick cup of tea to recover. He accepted the offer, and was about to walk in, but just then, the car door shut. He couldn't understand why, but then it started and drove off. It looked as if there was no one in it! He couldn't understand it. But it drove out of sight. He wondered if there might be a scary fault with the car, or a ghost in it or something. His friend suggested he call the police and ask them if they could stop it somehow. He was too embarrassed to for a while, since he thought they wouldn't believe him if he told them his car had driven off by itself. He tried looking on the Internet to see if his make of car had a bizarre fault that made it shut the door and drive by itself sometimes. But he couldn't find anything about such a thing.

"Eventually he did call the police. They found the car abandoned 80 miles down the motorway. There was a note in it written in spidery writing that said, 'That's what you get for messing with cobwebs!' The police found the car after lots of reports had come in to them of a car driving by on the motorway that didn't seem to have anyone in it, but the steering wheel was covered in spiders, and they were all over the rest of the car too.

"It seems that when the driver had driven through the cobweb, the spider who'd made it had quickly gathered all his friends together, big and small, and they'd all got in the car. It seems incredible that spiders could drive a car. But it seems that with a combined effort, they'd managed to shut the door, turn the key in the ignition, press down on the pedals, and steer the car down the road and along the motorway for miles. They'd also stolen the car radio and some things that had been in the glove compartment. They weren't found for months, but one day, a boy came across a radio in a wood, with lots of spiders all over the knobs, changing the station. He'd heard about what had happened to the car, and didn't want the spiders to come after him next, so he let them keep it."

Some of the audience thought that was a spooky story! Quite a few enjoyed it though. Then it was time for Becky to put a card down, and for Gary to have another go.

She put down a 9. That was the second 9 she'd put down. She read out the rule again:

"The person with the card has to pick a subject, and the one to the left tells a funny story about it, true or one they make up on the spur of the moment.

"OK: Apples."

Gary was getting a bit tired, so he couldn't think as quickly as he had at first. But he said:

"Once when I was ten years old, I lay under an apple tree all day, waiting to see if an apple would fall on my head and I'd suddenly have discovered some great scientific truth, like Isaac Newton did when an apple fell on his head. But nothing happened."

The others chuckled, but then said, smiling, "Is that it? Come on, think of something else!"

Everything went quiet as Gary thought. His mind was a bit blank and he thought for over ten seconds. One or two of the audience started showing signs of impatience. Then suddenly he drew in his breath, and made a loud high-pitched screeching noise in imitation of a baby screaming. Half the audience jumped! They'd forgotten the rule that said that anyone who couldn't think of a funny act to do could cry like a baby, and then the others would help them. Becky jumped too! She was right next to him.

The group playing decided to ask the audience if any one of them would like to tell a funny story about apples in place of Gary, which they could do if they paid a pound, which would go to the charities they were raising money for.

Lots of people put their hands up. The team could only choose one person, so they decided that they'd give lots of the audience the opportunity to tell funny stories about them when they'd finished playing themselves. And they decided that when their cards ran out, or when more of them ran out of ideas, they'd shuffle the cards again, and then they'd pass them round the table several times, with each person who picked one reading the rule that was connected to it, and asking audience members if they'd like to come up and do the funny act the rule said had to be done when a card with that number came up. Then as many audience members as wanted to could do a funny act in turn, even though it might be late when they finished. It would mean they raised more money.

But just then they had to choose one audience member to tell a funny story about apples. Becky's mum had put her hand up, and shouted, "Me! Me!" So they let her come to the front and tell a story.

Becky said to her, "Pay us for the privilege of telling your story first, and then you can tell it."

Her mum paid, and then said, "Well I can't remember saying this myself, but my sister Diana says I did. When we were little, we lived in a house with apple trees in the garden. We used to enjoy collecting the apples in the autumn when they fell off the trees. One day our mum asked us to go and bring lots of them in, and she said, 'For every five apples you pick up, I'll give you 1p.' I was only about five at the time. But I made a joke - at least, Diana says it sounded like one, although neither of us are quite sure if it was really a joke or just a misunderstanding. I said, 'I don't like peas!'"

Several audience members smiled, and the group playing the game all chuckled. Becky asked her mum if the story was true, and she said it was.

Then the team carried on playing.

When they ran out of cards, they put them in a pile again, shuffled them, and then took turns picking one out, reading the rule for it, and asking the audience if anyone would like to come up, pay a pound and do the funny act the rule said should be done. Quite a lot of them did. There weren't many of them who were as good at the game as Becky and her friends, but still they all had fun.

They all enjoyed the evening, and the next day the group of friends counted all the money they'd made from the event for charity. They'd made well over a thousand pounds!