Hotel that’s a tall storey
QUESTION What is the building in Pyongyang that North Korea claims to be the tallest in the world? THIS is the pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel that dominates the skyline of Pyongyang. It is one of the world’s strangest landmarks and most conspicuous construction project failures.
Dubbed the Hotel of Doom, it has yet to host a guest – despite building work having begun in 1987. The 105-storey hotel is 1,083 ft (330metres) high, so nowhere near as high as the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai at 2,717 ft (828m). Even at the time of its construction, it wouldn’t have been the tallest; that was the Sears (now Willis) Tower, at 1,450ft (442.1m). However, it could have claimed to be the tallest hotel in the world at the time – had it ever been opened. Today, the tallest hotel is the 1,165ft (355m), 77-floor JW Marriott Marquis Dubai.
Work began while Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founder and ‘eternal president’, was still in power. It was supposed to open in 1989, but a severe economic crash and famines in the Nineties left the country in no position to pump funds into its construction.
It remained little more than a concrete shell for well over a decade before Egypt’s Orascom Group – which was also key in establishing North Korea’s mobile phone system – helped pay to complete the building’s glossy exterior in 2011.
Earlier this year there were reports of lights shining from the apex, leading to speculation the hotel was about to open, though nothing has happened yet. Gary Barnes, Sheffield. QUESTION My wife and I have been debating the literary merits of toilet humour. Was Shakespeare a fan? If so, what examples are there? THE world’s oldest recorded joke, traced back to 1900 BC, shows toilet humour was as popular with the ancient Sumerians as it is today. It ran: ‘Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.’
Such jokes have found their way into the classics of Western literature. A famous one appears in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (late 14th century). In the Miller’s Tale, Nicholas and Absa- lom are competing for the attentions of the same girl, and Nicholas decides to humiliate his rival.
He waits at the window for Absalom to beckon the girl and, just when he does, Nicholas’s backside protrudes from a window to ‘let fly a fart with a noise as great as a clap of thunder, so that Absalom was almost overcome by the force of it’. Absalom responds by searing his rival’s backside with a redhot poker: ‘But he was ready with his hot iron and smote Nicholas in the middle of his ass.’
Dante’s The Inferno (14th century) has its author witnessing a demon mobilising his troops by using ‘his ass as a trumpet’.
Shakespeare (16th century) used a famous flatulence pun in his play The Comedy Of Errors, in which Dromio of Ephesus declares: ‘A man may break a word with you, sir; and words are but wind; Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.’ In Othello, musicians are performing when a clown interrupts them.
Clown: Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?
First Musician: Ay marry are they, sir. Clown: O, thereby hangs a tail. First Musician: Thereby hangs a tail, sir?
Clown: Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know. (The tail here refers to a bottom)
Two Gentlemen Of Verona features a flatulent dog named Crab, given as a gift by a young man named Proteus to a girl, Silvia, whom he likes. A servant, Launce, explains: ‘I was sent to deliver [the dog] as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master... [the dog goes] under the Duke’s table; he had not been there, bless the mark, a pissing while, but all the chamber smelt him.’
Subsequently, Jonathan Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, devoted a book to the subject with The Benefit Of Farting Explained (1722). In it, he argues eloquently, in a forceful and posteriori fashion, that most of the distempers thought to affect the fairer sex are due to flatulences not adequately vented. (Swift published it under the pseudonym Don Fartinando PuffIndorst, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow.) Mark Collingwood, Dawlish, Devon. QUESTION What language is spoken at the start of the 1958 instrumental hit record Tom Hark by Elias And His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes? FURTHER to the earlier answer, while Tom Hark sold millions of copies, the musician brothers behind it, Elias and Jack Lerole, barely made a penny from the recording. They each received six guineas (£6.30). Knowing his brother was broke, Jake gave the rights to the song to Elias, who sold them to record company executive Rupert Bopape for £30, which he spent on flashy clothes. Tim Bowles, Birmingham.
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