Customer: 'I would like to buy a fish licence.'
Post Office man: 'What?'
Customer: 'A licence. For my pet fish, Eric. He's an 'alibut.'
PO man: 'He's a what?'
'Customer: 'He is an halibut. Chose him out of thousands. Didn't like the look of the others - they were all too flat.'
PO man: 'You're a loony!'
Customer: 'I am not a loony!.'
PO man: 'You don't need a licence for your pet fish.'
Customer: 'I bleedin' well do, and I got one. Can't be caught out there.'
PO man: 'There is no such thing as a fish licence!'
Customer: 'Yes there is. I got a licence for my pet dog Eric, and I got a licence for my pet cat Eric.'
PO man: 'You don't need a licence for your cat!'
Customer: 'What's that then?'
PO man: 'This is a dog licence with the word dog crossed out and the word cat written in, in crayon!'
Customer: 'The man didn't have the right form.'
PO man: 'What man?'
Customer: 'The man from the cat-detector van.'
PO man: 'The loony-detector van, you mean.'
Customer: 'Look, it's people like you what cause unrest!'
PO man: 'What cat detector van?'
Customer: 'The cat-detector van from the Ministry of Housinge.'
PO man: 'Housinge?'
Customer: 'It was spelt like that on the van I'm very observant.'
PO man: 'Yes, all right, all right. A licence.'
Customer: 'Yiss.'
PO man: 'For a fish.'
Customer: 'Yiss.'
PO man: 'You ARE a loony!'
Customer: 'I am not a loony! Why should I be tarred with the epithet loony merely because I have a pet halibut?'
PO man: 'Are all of your pets called Eric?'
Customer: 'There's nothing so odd about that. Dawn Palethorpe the lady show jumper had a pet clam called Stafford, after the late Chancellor. Alan Bullock has two pikes both called Chris, and Marcel proust had an 'addock! Kemal Ataturk had an entire menagerie called Abdul! So if you're calling the author of 'A La Recherche Du Temps Perdus' a loony, I shall have to ask you to step outside!'
I was a member of my university Monty Python Quoter's League in the 1970s - shows, huh.
