THE WEASELS
“The quotes which appear on the following pages are all genuine and were made by various individuals who worked (obviously under immense pressure !) at Mixenden between 1976 and 1989.” T. Reed, April 1992
In The Pub
Baz: "A pint of crisps please”
Clive Walton: “A pint of bitter and half a loaf please”
Clive Walton: “A pint of curried nuts please”
Thanks for your help
Baz: “I’m telling you this verbally”
D. Wood: “The easy ones are not hard”
D. Hopkins: (discussing the staff restuarant) “If everyone came in here it would be full”
Clive Walton: “Joyce was reversing . . . . backwards.”
J. Dobson: JD: (holding up the phone) “It’s Gordon” J. Clegg: “Where is he?” JD: “On the other end of this phone”
G. Bak: T.Reed: “Was that a ten pence piece?” GB: “No - it was a five and a seven.”
S. Good: (on the telephone) “That’s U for Eunice”
Clive Walton: “The difference between them is . . . . they both achieve the same function”
Clive Walton: T.Reed: “Does anyone know whether program GW4001 accesses Product Terms records?” CW: “Definitely not, apart from the possibility that it might do”
S. Good: “You will find it difficult to have a joint mortgage in one name”
Silly Question Time
J. Clegg: “Are there any other things which we don’t know about ?”
Clive Walton: “Was Blackburn around last week ?”
B. Kettle: A. Dare: “Why not have a word with Colin Jones?” BK: “ I will. What’s his name? ”
V. Russell: “Can anyone hear that ? It sounds like one of those dog whistles you can’t hear”
J. Cane: (in response to the message ‘Please ring 211 - Ta’): Rings 211 and says “Can I speak to Ta please ?”
R.D.: “Is that going to stay here until it goes somewhere else ?”
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
G. Harrison: “You should see the module flowcharts - there aren’t any”
Clive Walton: "Did you see the other little snippets of mods - oh, no, you won’t - there aren’t any”
D. Wood: “I copied it to nowhere and then deleted it”
C. Flynn: “Ooooh - just look at that wind !”
Clive Walton: “Hello Steve, I appear to have dialled the wrong number, but it’s nice to see you anyway”
T. Reed: “You can see through me like a book”
B. Kettle: “By the time you get to the top of the second hill, all the runners you can see have disappeared”
Clive Walton: “It’s about time we saw some hard, concrete papaer instead of the paper we are not seeing”
S. Blinman: Kevin Aspindle: “Was that lightning ?” SB: “Yes, didn’t you see the thunder ?”
S. Good: (on the telephone) “Watch my lips”
Directional Problems
D. Hopkins: “My job has just gone down like a rocket”
D. Hopkins: “You’ve got to be able to access any record from the top upwards”
Clive Walton: “You wouldn’t like Mike Dickinson to descend from Hell on you, would you”
Date Problems
T. Coles: “It’s Thursday today, and it was all last week as well”
T. Reed: “I’ll need it all day Wednesday morning”
B. Kettle: “What was the date of the run - 9 o’clock ?”
Clive Walton: (on March 29th) “This was run on March 21st . . . two days ago”
Clive Walton: “Liz - what date is the 20th ?”
Clive Walton: “It was a bad day last night”
R. Garland: “This afternoon is cancelled”
T. Butler: “They produce statements on the third Saturday, which is next Tuesday”
A. Whitehouse: ( on December 1st) “Brian is full of the joys of Spring”
A. Barber: “This is the last year of the month”
Would You Dare ?
A. Dare: “Baz is all excited because he’s heard his name in lights”
A. Dare: “I’ve got a drinker’s nose on my leg”
A. Dare: “My butcher’s nose is throbbing”
A. Dare: “I think it’s a sheep in lamb’s clothing”
A. Dare: (attempting to refer to ‘rain checks’) “Rain chep chacks” (and also) “I think I’ll take a chain chack”
A. Dare: “Go take a short walk on a long pier.”
A. Dare: “Discern is the right word . .. . . . what does it mean ?” (looks up ‘discern’ in the dictionary) “See - it does know what I thought it meant.”
A. Dare: (attempting to refer to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) “You know - those Four Archangels of Armageddon”
A. Dare: “A funny coloured lamb made this jumper”
A. Dare: “Use the same tapes, only a different one”
A. Dare: “I once made a crossbow out of a magazine”
A. Dare: “We’re talking about the pen calling the kettle glack” (yes, glack)
A. Dare: “We are playing to brand new spanking rules”
A. Dare: “How do you like my Val Doonican jumper ? All I need now is a rocking horse”
A. Dare: “You’re walking on thin water”
A. Dare: “Look, there’s Liz. And there’s Paul, hot on her feet”
A. Dare: AD: “I’ve been completely teetotal so far this year” Ian Crabtree: “really, how many pints have you had ?” AD: “Four”
A. Dare: “I’m just like that woman in ‘Spend, Spend, Spend’ - what was her name ? Viv Richardson ?”
A. Dare: “I’ll get you back before today”
A. Dare: D. Spencer (referring to Dan’s 98p gumshield) “98 pence, Dan, just to protect your teeth ?” AD: “Well it’s better than a £100 vet’s bill”
A. Dare: “Pictures speak louder than words”
Pardon ?
Clive Walton: “It doesn’t do what we didn’t know we wanted it to do”
D. Hopkins: “It’s raining according to the pond”
G. Harrison: “It’s easier to suppress something you’ve got than to print something you haven’t got”
Clive Walton: “David escapes as the phone arrives”
A. Harston: AH: “We’re waiting for the go-ahead” Martin Delaney: “From whom ?” AH: “I don’t know”
Clive Walton: “It will be a full time job for Mr Reed and parts of me”
D. Hopkins: “I’ve put in enough hours this week to sink a battleship”
R. Mattock: "Shut the door and let me in”
M. Costello: “I could do with a drink to dry my throat”
Clive Walton: “This fault causes errors we don’t know about”
C. Flynn: CF: “Moses was a nasty guy - he wouldn’t let the unicorns on the ark” S. Good: “That was Noah” CF: “Oh yes - Moses was the guy with the beard, wasn’t he.”
B.Kettle: “What’s that big lump of gap in the middle ?”
Clive Walton: “We are on the dawn of a new horizon”
Clive Walton: “There is only one skeleton on the horizon”
G. Aitken: “I got a house through the letter box yesterday”
Kevin Aspindle: “The gods are shining down on Clive today”
Tony Whitehead: “Liz is going to drive home on a tank full of empty petrol”
T. Reed: (re Grand National sweepstake) “Have you heard which duck I have drawn ?”
Tony Whitehead: “This isn’t seafood - it’s fish !”
B. Kettle: “I don’t want any fear of compunction”
G.Aitken: “This is like an octopus’s web”
R. Thomas: “I see you are going straight in with all cannons flailing”
R. Scott: “There is nothing to stop them doing overnight transmissions during the day”
G. Bak: “Egglacly”
S. Good: “Look - a swarm of ducklings”
L. Clayton: “Ship shape and parrot fashion”
G. Bak: “She’s slow on the uphil bits but she runs a bit down on the level bits”
T. Reed: “We nearly got intosticky water once”
A. Whitehouse: “When I left this morning, my wife was fast asleep in bed drinking a cup of tea”
L. Clayton: G.Aitken: “How are you ?” LC: “Not very well. I can’t sleep at night - I’ve got amnesia”
G. Bak: “I can never get dry in those showers”
Pete Morrell: “Looking into the foreseeable past...”
Tony Whitehead: (re eel killing) “We had to lampoon it with a spike”
K. Breedon: KB: “No-one believes me when I tell them how tall I am” T. Reed: “How tall are you ?” KB: “I don’t know”
S. Blinman: A. Whitehouse: “Samantha, shouldn’t you be thinking about a pension ?” SB: “No, I’m not illegible yet”
S. Blinman: “I was on my way to the loo but I got mislaid”
L. Waddington: “My great was needer than yours”
Martin Delaney: “I’m sorry I didn’t ring you earlier but I was in the coffee machine”
Martin Delaney: “I haven’t seen tide nor tail of it”
S. Good: “... the friend of my wife’s husband.”
S. Good: “Little things come in small packages”
Horsing Around
Clive Walton: (re horse riding) “I found legs I didn’t think I’d got”
Clive Walton: “My horse has only two legs now. To walk it has to rest it’s paw on my shoulder”
Clive Walton: “Hold on - hang your horses a second...”
Clive Walton: “The foal wants to leave the nest”
Clive Walton: “It’s like shutting the door after the stable has bolted”
Clive Walton: (re Tessa, Clive’s horse) “It’s Tessa’s stag night today”
Clive Walton: (still re Tessa, Clive’s horse) “Tessa eats like a horse”
Clive’s Classics
Clive Walton: G.Harrison: “Did they ring you up last night ?” CW: “I don’t know yet”
Clive Walton: (having just entered the office with a tray of 14 cups of coffee) “Have we not got any coffees ?”
Clive Walton: G.Harrison: “What are you doing, Clive ?” CW: (sitting at his desk) “I’m just standing here”
Clive Walton: “It sounds like the rats are ganging up and leaving the drowning ship”
Clive Walton: (ringing his mother from work at 23:05) “I shal be late”
Clive Walton: “I must alter my watch to the correct date - it’s showing an unbelievable time”
Clive Walton: “I shall now go for a pee and look at what I really wanted to look at all morning”
Clive Walton: “He hasn’t come for a permanent job - just a sandwich”
Clive Walton: “This chart summarises the previous one in greater detail”
Clive Walton: “This may be a wild herring”
Clive Walton: A. Dare: “It’s ‘The Man From Uncle’...” CW: “You what - you’ve got a mad monk on ?”
Clive Walton: (to Andy Borowy) “Are you Terry’s sister ?”
Clive Walton: “This is a sinking rat syndrome”
Clive Walton: “... many people, including me and no-one else”
Clive Walton: “Things are tending to surface through the woodwork”
Clive Walton: G. Bak: “I’ll be playing table tennis tonight until about 11pm” CW: “This means that George will be coming to work tonight with a shuttlecock in his hand”
Clive Walton: “You shouldn’t take the stick if you can’t take it”
Clive Walton: “I’ll pass you on to Robert - this should be right up his ball park”
Clive Walton: “I will get you the information at the stroke of a hat”
Clive Walton: “This utility works quite well except that it gives up at the final ghost”
Clive Walton: “I’ve got the full weight of my shoulders on my shoulders”
Clive Walton: (re his snooker match) “We were in trouble but I played a captain’s innings and we lost”
Clive Walton: “My car was sniggering”
Clive Walton: “A patchwork of quilt”
Clive Walton: “George is going to tell you something about it - he’s all ears”
Clive Walton: CW: “What’s Colin’s name ?” M. Costello: “Which Colin ?” CW: “Colin Hollindrake”
Clive Walton: “What’s Brenda’s first name ?”
Clive Walton: “Just bury that in your hatchet”
Clive Walton: “I’ve been talking to a cowboy salesman - his name was Tonto”
Clive Walton: “I was only asking that question because I didn’t want to know the answer”
Clive Walton: CW: “Trevor and Mike lean on me so much, it’s like a Pizza Hut in here” Various: “Pardon?” CW: “You know - the leaning tower of pizza”
Clive Walton: CW: “We still haven’t got those prints from this morning yet, have we Mike ?” M.Costello: “Which prints ?” CW: “Those prints which I threw away”
Clive Walton: “Tony Keeling is selling us a dead ringer on this one”
Clive Walton: “I’ve been sold a flanker by Rita”
Clive Walton: “What a mine of organisation”
Clive Walton: “My glasses are giving me a dose of bad news”
Clive Walton: "I can’t see any benefits in it . . . . in fact, I can see a lot of disbenefits””
Clive Walton: “The baby is now a single-parent family”
Clive Walton: “We had an Italian meal which cost £6.50, give or take a few centimes”
Clive Walton: “Once you’ve got a bit of a head of steam in front of you”
Clive Walton: “This needs some verbal flesh on it”
Clive Walton: “We ought to try and put a bit of bone on the meat”
Clive Walton: J. Hirst: “Have you decided when we will be having the appraisals yet, Clive ?” CW: “Yes, but I don’t know when we will be having them yet”
Clive Walton: “We don’t want to be rewriting the wheel”
Clive Walton: “It’s like talking to drying paint”
Clive Walton: “I’ll have to give him a ring to find out what his telephone number is”
Clive Walton: “They can’t bark with Bonclays”
Clive Walton: “This is quick even though it’s slow”
Time Trouble
D.Wood: (speaking at 11:47am) “I know it’s rather short notice but I would like this afternoon off”
C.Flynn: “Have you got a minute for a minute in several minutes ?”
A.Dare: "My clock has been zeroised back to twelve”
Going Metric ?
Baz: B: “There’s only been 8mm of rain all month” J.Dobson: “What’s that in inches ?” B: “About half an hour”
B. Kettle: M. Costello: “. . . . that’s about 4,300 metres” BK: “What’s that in metric ?”
Parts of the Body
Simon Good: “I’ve got toothache in my shoulder”
B. Kettle: “I was playing Head Tennis last night. I hurt my knee.”
B. Kettle: “My ear is whistling”
Clive Walton: “I was finger-picking with my throat”
Clive Walton: “His ears were twinkling”
Clive Walton: “Alicante has one of the worst-smelling harbours you’ll ever hear”
A.Whitehouse: “If you get some proper running shoes your knee will disappear”
A.Whitehouse: (on the telephone) “Fancy seeing you here !”
D.Wood: “It’s painful on the earballs”
Clive Walton: “He stopped a bullet with his forehead . . . . it hit him right on the jaw”
Baz: “It’s bad manners to eat whilst your mouth is full”
L. Clayton: “It’s bad manners to speak with your mouth open”
S. Good: “I’m talking to you with my left hand”
Clive Walton: “Not only has he not got a voice but it’s very loud as well...”
And Finally...
Dale Cordingley: “I am not a hatchet-man.”