YouTube Transcription: Tim Vine aka The Pun Slinger
Tim Vine is a pun specialist. A pun is a one-line joke, also known as a one-liner. Most of these puns rely on the listener understanding the double meaning wordplay.
As always, I don’t recommend using YouTube’s automatic subtitles because they are sometimes ok, but sometimes very, very wrong. For example, at 3:20 He says, “Velcro…” (the so-called magic tape) but the auto subtitle says a very bad word in error. Tim Vine never swears!
Here is a small selection of his puns:
0:52 “But it’s strange, isn’t it, you stand in the middle of a library and go ‘Aaaaah!’ and everyone stares at you. Do the same thing on an aeroplane end everyone joins in.”
1:53 “And then when a referee walked in and I thought, ‘It’s all going to kick off now.”
One meaning is of course to start a football match. The other meaning of “kick off” is to start trouble, perhaps a fight.
2:08 “So Eric Bristow came up to me. He said, ‘How come you put superglue on one of my darts?’ I said, ‘You just can’t let it go, can you?'”
Eric Bristow is a former darts champion, famous in the UK. The expression “You just can’t let it go,” means that you keep a grudge, you cannot forgive a past bad action that somebody had done. It also means that you can’t let the dart go; because it is stuck to your fingers.
3:08 “You see, the advantage of easy origami is two-fold.”
Well, if the origami has only two folds, of course it is very easy, but we often say “The advantage of… is two-fold,” to mean that there are two reasons for it being an advantage. For example, “The advantage of walking to work is two-fold – I save money and I get exercise.”
3:16 “Exit signs – they’re on the way out, aren’t they?”
The expression “on the way out” means becoming less fashionable.
3:32 “A friend of mine found a gold coin in a lump of earth. Lucky sod!”
A “sod” is a lump of soil and grass, so that sod was lucky… but when we say “Lucky sod” it means we are jealous of the other person. “Sod” is often used to mean an uncooperative or troublesome person.
4:40 “That’s five horse jokes on the trot… six!”
The expression “On the trot” means consecutively, but it also means a horse’s slow run.
6:08 “I’ve got a friend who’s got a butler whose left arm is missing. Serves him right.”
The expression “Serves him right” means that it is his own fault, I have no sympathy. It also means that the butler serves (meals, drinks) with his right arm.