Chapter 7: Stand up & deliver, your funny or your life!

As Face To Facebook will eventually be turned into a stand up show, this week I've asked each friend their favourite joke and after reading it I then wrote an original gag to compliment it. This week's blog is written in the style of a stand up gig with the borrowed joke first and the Davis original straight after.

Imagine you've just paid a fiver to sit in the back room of a rank pub and you and your mates are the only one's there...

"Good evening ladies and gentleman, my name is Max Davis."

"There were two peanuts walking down the street and one of them was a salted!"

"I actually live in a constant fear of getting attacked at knife point. My only hope is that if this ever happens my girlfriend isn't with me. It's not that I'm over protective, I just don't want her to see me burst into tears and shit myself."

"What's yellow, sticky and smells of banana's?"

"Monkey sick".

"The funny thing about illness is you need someone else to confirm it for you. But you don't go to a doctor, you go to the first person you can find and say, 'feel my head, it's warm isn't it?' As if this untrained individual has any ability to diagnose your condition. What's worse is you don't want them to tell you you're fine. You WANT them to tell you you've got a temperature because somehow that makes you feel better! 'I knew it! I knew I was ill! Thanks mate'"

"Where's the best place to find out how much a pie weighs? *sings* Somewhere over the rainbow. No? Nothing? Weigh a pie."

"I can hear some of you groaning out there which is encouraging because I was worried you had died. I like that joke because you have to finish it yourself, although it does smack of Pieway robbery."

"Speaking of which, I walked past a car yesterday and there was a sign in the window. It said, For Sale: £995 or near offer. So I called the number and said, 'I'll give you £9.'"
"A sailor meets a pirate in a bar, and they take turns telling about their adventures on the seas. The sailor notes that the pirate has a peg-leg, a hook and an eye patch.
The sailor asks "So, how did you end up with the peg-leg?"
The pirate replies: "We were in a storm at sea, and I were swept overboard headed for Davy Jones' Locker. Just as me men were pullin' me out, a shark bit me leg off."
"Wow!" said the sailor. "What about the hook?"
The pirate went on, “We were boarding an enemy ship and were battling the other sailors with swords. One of the enemy cut me hand off.”
"Incredible!" said the sailor. "And how did you get the eye patch?"
“Arrr. That were from a seagull dropping fell into me bloody eye,” replied the pirate.
"You lost your eye to a seagull dropping?" the sailor asked incredulously.
"Shiver me timbers!" said the pirate. "It was me first day with the hook..."
"Why is it whenever you go to a public toilet now they have detailed instructions on how to wash your hands, but nothing about drying them? There must be people staggering around outside public lavs screaming 'What now?! What now?!' That's if they can get the door open.
"They say, ladies and gentleman, you should end a set with a big finish, which is fortunate in my case because this next joke is fucking enormous."
"After dating his girlfriend for years, a man decides that he wants to ask her to marry him. But he has a problem. What he loves more than anything in the whole world is a big plate of baked beans. But unfortunately they give him incredibly bad gas. And he doesn't ever want her to know how his horrible secret. Torn, he finally decides he's going to ask her, and he will never eat beans again.

Ten years down the line, they are happily married and he has not once indulged in his favourite meal. His wife has no idea of his terrible problem. Then one night, on his birthday, he begins the journey home and his car breaks down. He has promised her he will be home on time as she has a big surprise for him. He walks along the road until he comes to a diner where he can call her from a payphone.

As he walks in, he can smell baked beans cooking. He phones and says he will be late, she says she will keep dinner warm while he walks home. As he turns to go, an idea occurs to him. If he eats a plate now, he can get rid of his wind on the way home, and his wife will never know.

Only, he gets home and as it's a particularly bad case, he's still not quite, well, finished. (It has been ten years, maybe his stomach's not quite used to it). He lets out what he hopes will be one last tremendous fart outside, and just in time before his wife opens the front door.

She says "Welcome home honey - boy have I got a surprise for you!" She blind folds him and leads him to the dining room table, sits him down, and says "On the count of three, I'll take off your blind fold. Ok - one, two..." and the doorbell rings..

As she goes to answer it he decides he can't hold it any longer, and lets out an enormous fart. It's pretty bad. Panicked, he grabs his hankie out of his pocket and starts waving it away, and just in time as she returns.

"Ok, sorry honey. Ready - one, two..." and the phone rings! She runs to answer it, and he lets out the most enormous one yet. He stumbles blindfolded to the window and opens it, madly fanning to get rid of the smell before she comes back. He sits down just in time and shoves his hankie back in his pocket again. She'll never know...

"Ok, no matter what happens this time honey" she says "I'm going to do it. One, two, three!!" She whips off his blindfold, and what do you think he sees at the table??

All of his friends and family, sitting in stunned silence..."
"As I get older I find myself farting more. I'm also finding a disturbing amount of fluff in my belly button. I've almost got enough to make a set of matching hand towels."
"It gets worse. I found my first grey pube the other day. That's the last time I go speed dating in a care home."
"I've been Max Davis and you've been, whatever your individual names are. Thank you and good night!"

Chapter 6: Don't mess with the bull son, you'll get the horns.

As I get older I find myself in an almost perpetual state of annoyance. I get annoyed by young people with the headphones and crack and I'm equally annoyed by old pensioners with their hearing aids and their crack.

Mostly I'm annoyed by myself. I don't mean by this that I'm mostly annoyed when I am alone, I mean that Max Davis as he currently stands in the year of our lord 2011 is a very annoying creature. He thinks he's far funnier than is. For example, here is a joke I recently did at a stand up gig in London.

"I was going to tell you about the time I tried to slit my wrists, but I thought it would be a bit near the knuckle."

Nothing. Silence. Actually I think I heard a guy at the back of the room throw up.

For the last two weeks, Face To Facebook has been devoted to the study of Annoying Facebook Types. It turns out that much like The Breakfast Club these friends can be divided into convenient definitions. I asked each friend if they had any experience of them and if they were brave enough to admit whether or not they themselves were guilty of being one.

In honour of that classic piece of cinematic brilliance all names have been changed to actors from the film.

Molly Ringwald has an interesting story about The Chronic Inviter. She rashly accepted the friend request of someone she didn't know because they had lots of mutual friends. This individual then began to comment on all of her status updates and pestered her to read his very boring blog (the irony of this is not lost on me gentle reader). Things got so bad that Facebook itself had to send him a warning because he was adding too many people as friends. Given that Facebook allows Holocaust deniers and tribute pages to uber nutcase (and friend of Gazza) Raoul Moat to operate without censorship this guy must have been racking up some serious numbers.

This brings us neatly to Ally Sheedy who freely admits that she herself is a member of the next group, The Stalker. I can assure you we all have these. They are people who you didn't even know you were friends with constantly commenting and "liking" every single bloody thing you update. I once got a like AND a comment on a picture of a chili. But Ally freely admits that she is nosy by nature and you can't help but love that kind of honesty. Like on my friend, like on.

Fran Gargano (I know, if I'd have thought this through I would have realised there's only really two girls in the movie) hates a Lame & Boring Status Updater. Posts such as "Just snuggling down on the sofa to watch X Factor with my BF" are met with a swift culling. If you really piss her off she'll post an angry hip hop video on your wall. Frankly if your posting FB status updates when you should be snuggling then your relationship is doomed and not even Biggie can help you.
Fran says I'm welcome to use her name but you'd be better off going to youtube and searching TheBanditBennett24 and watch her hilarious stuff first hand.

Judd Nelson hates a Sympathy Baiter and I can't say I blame him. The internet is not there for people to whinge about their problems. It's for porn and redubbing Darth Vader dialogue with Chas and Dave songs. I was going to call these people The Miserablists but that is in fact the name of my friend Cliff's air guitar band and he is liable to sue. We used to be in another air guitar band called Satan's Underpants but broke up when an imaginary groupie OD'd on some metaphysical coke.

Emilio Estevez on the other hand only uses Facebook to organise the local village football team. His pet hate is the Lame Gamers, People who keep trying to get you to work on an imaginary farm. Having said that I work in a very real pub and was recently attacked by a mad man wielding a bottle of vinegar and so that virtual grass looks pretty green right now.

And what of me? Your faithful Quester. Well I shall tell you. I love with every fibre of my being the Brawler. I love nothing more than to go to my News Feed and read "Paula is tired of all the two faced little slags chatting shit about her and Dave behind our backs! What goes around comes around and Tracy, I know what you said about me last Friday to Trisha so you'd better stay out of my way cos next time I'm in town you are DEAD!"

God bless you Paula. Have WKD blue on me.

Until next week...