PUN-HIT WONDERS:

TO SOME people puns are a required taste.

For our mob puns are as divisive as the date of Australia Day seems to be of late.

Some of our group, ie. Nobby and myself, absolutely love a good pun — or a bad pun for that matter.

To the rest of the group, puns are poison, which is ironic really because they so often seem to swallow them before realising they’ve been had.

To Gaz and “Golden Gloves” Micky, puns can be the trigger for violent responses so much do they despise them.

As I’ve explained in this column before, spending any extended time with our mob is exhausting.

No one ever misses a chance to have a crack at another or more of the group and if you can catch out someone and leave them embarrassed or stirred up, it’s an opportunity not to be missed.

Those on the peripheral struggle to comprehend how we remain mates after all these years so cruel are some of the verbal lashings.

However, the trick to stirring the pun pot with these blokes is to keep a straight face until the pun becomes obvious, that way your target believes you are telling them something of interest (or even importance) and maintains focus until it’s too late.

Just this week two of us narrowly avoided a flurry of fists from Golden Gloves when he realised he’d been set up again.

We had been watching Millionaire Hot Seat at the pub when Eddie posed a question to which Albert Einstein was the correct answer.

Seeing the name on the screen, Nobby turned to Golden Gloves and asked quite seriously “Do you know Albert Einstein’s famous brother’s name?”

Having no idea, but believing Nobby to have such information, Mick replied “Nuh”.

“Harry? Bill? John?” Mick offered.

“No, it’s ‘Frank’,” Nobby replied with straight face.

“Frank? How was he famous?” Mick asked.

“What? You’ve never heard of ‘Frank-Einstein?’,” Nobby replied before bursting into laughter, thereby triggering the ensuing, and expected, violence.

The thing about our mate Mick is he is always willing to believe what we are telling him is true.

And, despite only minutes before being left in pun rage, Mick sat quietly as another question came up on screen to which the correct answer was Mark Twain.

“Yes, but did you know Mark Twain’s younger brother was not only an archbishop who fought against apartheid in South Africa but he was also a pioneer of South African Railways,” another posed.

The others awaited this titbit of historical information with some anticipation.

“Yes, he was Archbishop Tu Tu Twain!”

I don’t have to explain the response but suffice to say typing this column with bruised fingers hasn’t been easy.

❝ Do you know Albert Einstein’s famous brother’s name?