Libby Purves

A grammar book walks into a bar * An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars. * A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. * A bar was walked into by the passive voice. * An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening. * Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.” * A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intents and purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite. * Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything. * A question mark walks into a bar? * A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly. * Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type." * A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud. * A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves. * Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart. * A synonym strolls into a tavern. * At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack. * A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment. * Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor. * A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered. * An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel. * The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known. * A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph. * The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense. * A dyslexic walks into a bra. * A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines. * A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert. * A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget. * A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony . – Jill Thomas Doyle

I hope Adam apologises and retracts these vile remarks immediately. A colleague has been murdered, and this is how he chooses to speak about her? Awful, twisted and utterly without decency. His team has just called asking me to appear on his show. I won’t. And unless he apologises, I don’t think anyone else should either. 👇🏽

Here is Roger Ebert's first paragraph of his review for "The Mummy" and it is why he was the greatest film critic to ever live

I remember hearing the thud as that bus blew up: trying (and failing) to contact my partner by phone; the desperate posters families put up by Kings Cross to see if anyone had spotted their lost loved ones. Also brought out the worst of institutions:

If you’re a woman (the old fashioned sort who don’t have a penis) do you feel happy going to a pub by yourself for a drink? Have you ever had any issues sat in a pub having a quiet drink by yourself? I ask because I think many women are too nervous to go by themselves because they think they’ll be treated as looking for a bloke, but I think that they won’t and it’s in their mind. But then again, I’m a bloke so would genuinely like to hear.