Great Men & Above Average Women

Mar.23,2012

Bob Bassett

Barman of Sheffields’s ‘Dog and Crown’ inn in the 1950s who was famed for his witty, acerbic remarks. He once hilariously informed a punter embarking on an ill-advised business adventure that he’d have more luck selling “bottled water” (then unheard of). When the man, Ian Evian, went on to become a feted multi-millionaire, Bassett vowed that he would never again let another man benefit from the wisdom of his trademark epigrams. He eventually died of frostbite in Greenland’s Arctic tundra while attempting to sell ice to Eskimos.

Feb.3,2012

Morgan Jones

A man of no consequence, but with an agent so good that he is able to manufacture the inclusion of his name in any publication he wishes. Appears here courtesy of CKP management.

Dec.17,2011

John Roswell

Highly respected conspiracy theorist who on the 4th of July 1976 made the tragic mistake of watching a documentary about the Kennedy assassination and reading a book on Descartes in the same afternoon. This potent combination forced his sense of reality to collapse in on itself, and in a state of feverish paranoia he decided to redecorate his living room by scrawling the now famous words “I think, therefore I must be in on it” across the walls with his own blood. His body was discovered in a sewer in New Mexico several months later and forensic scientists were able to a retrieve a further sheaf of notes from inside his stomach, in which Roswell declared his intention to “keep myself hidden from me at all costs, lest I should ever be discovered by myself and be forced to divulge the knowledge I have of my involvement in this blatant …

Dr Theodor Fritz

Renowned 19th century psychiatrist whose controversial theories were initially dismissed by his peers as “pseudoscientific fantasies”, but who eventually found acclaim within both the academic community and the public at large. His most famous essay, in which he claimed that every man secretly harbours a desire to make love to his mother and that this desire should be embraced rather than repressed, had by 1894 become so widely accepted that sexual relations between a mother and son were commonplace. This behaviour eventually fell out of fashion in the early 1900s, around the same time that Dr. Fritz retired from psychiatry. Fritz claimed that society was simply not ready for such ideas, and added that the movement was essentially redundant now that his own mother had finally “put out”.

Jul.3,2011

Ted Smith

Though he was universally regarded as the stupidest man in history, no one actually bothered to tell Ted Smith and he managed to lead an illustrious life – forming numerous groundbreaking mathematical theories and discovering a new elementary particle – before someone told him what an idiot he was. The downtrodden Smith was forced to admit that his many unprecedented scientific advances must have been dumb luck, and he spent the last few years of his life alone on a park bench, picking his nose and eating it.

Jun.13,2011

Liam Burns

Obituary writer for The Times that became so respected in the 1950s for the exquisitely eloquent epitaphs he crafted for the rich and famous that the public began to find it difficult to come to terms with a famous death until it had been commemorated by Burns. He soon became the authoritative voice on the subject and after his first attempt at a serious novel flopped spectacularly, he became bitter and began to use his influence to “kill off” any public figures whom he took a disliking to. Victims of his column would thereafter find it impossible to gain employment, or to be taken seriously by any of the official living. In one famous incident, then Prime Minister Harold Wilson returned to London after a country holiday to find that his death had been reported by Burns in The Times that morning, and subsequently taken up by all the major …