by Peter Quinn
Brendan Behan’s cat trick
17 May 2009
I was cutting a painter’s hair one day when he told me that Brendan Behan had been a painter also. He told me this story:
Customer: Behan was painting a sitting-room in a large house in Dublin. The room had a beautiful and expensive Persian rug that almost covered the entire floor. Well, Behan had been drinking the previous night and didn’t feel too good, but he set up his ladder and began to paint. He was on the ladder with the pot of paint on the top step when he accidentally knocked over the pot, and it fell to the floor onto the rug, and the paint spilled out. The rug was destroyed! He knew he was in trouble now, as he heard someone approaching after hearing the noise of the pot hitting the floor. Suddenly he saw a cat, and he grabbed it and rolled it in the spill and let it go. It ran out the door, leaving a trail of paw marks in paint as it went. At the same moment there was a slight yelp from a maid who’d heard the noise. The cat had startled her, and, as she walked in and saw the mess, her jaw dropped. Behan shouted, ‘That damn cat knocked my paint over.’ Behan, thanks to his quick thinking, had passed the blame on, and the owner of the house even bought him a new pair of overalls.
Barber: That’s a great story.
Customer: Yeah, for one man he was some man!
Tinfoil highlights
18 May 2009
Customer: Would you not cut women’s hair?
Barber: Why do you say that?
Customer: Sure there must be a fortune to be made in that game. Huh? The wife went to a place in town, one of those big places, to get the foil and a cut.
Barber: The foil?
Customer: Ah, yeah. You know the foil they put on the hair with the colour in it?
Barber: Oh, yeah, tinfoil highlights—very expensive.
Customer: Expensive? I nearly passed away when she told me how much they were, and then she says the cut was extra on top of that. Jaysus, are they mad or what? The neighbour asked the missus the other day if she’d had a bad fright. She was looking funny at the wife for a minute, like there was something different about her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. ‘Are you okay, Mary?’ says she. ‘You look like you had a scare.’ ‘No,’ says the wife. ‘God, do you know,’ says the neighbour, realising what it was, ‘it’s your hair, Mary—it’s turned grey!’ You’d want to have seen her face!
Oestrogen in the water!
19 May 2009
I was talking to a customer one day about the new haircuts that teenagers wear and how feminine they seemed, and he began to tell me about a documentary he’d seen on television.
Customer: I saw a programme on TV about oestrogen in the water, and it’s affecting the fish. In some of the big cities you see they recycle the water over and over for drinking. Although they can get rid of almost every pollutant and bacteria, they haven’t been able to get rid of the oestrogen. So it’s been affecting the fish, and they’re changing sex!
Barber: I did hear about beef that’s been injected with growth hormones—men can grow breasts if they eat a lot of it.
Customer: That’s exactly it. Well, I was at a wedding recently, and I went outside for a cigarette. And what did I see: the women were all over on one side smoking, and on the other side the men were all holding the babies, and straight away, you know—right then and there I thought of the fish!
There’s always one
20 May 2009
There was a lad who every now and again would pop his head in the door to tell us he was going next door for his prescription. Next door is an off-licence. He’d pass on the way back, waving a brown paper bag in the air for us to see. ‘I got my prescription. I’ll be feeling better tomorrow.’ Sometimes he’d just shout in the odds the bookies were giving that day on anything from the chance of snow to the US presidential election. One day, when he’d just given us an update on the economy (in his own very original way), and had gone on about his business, the customer in my chair announced, ‘There’s one in every village!’
Everyone burst out laughing!
Microwave-seal test
21 May 2009
Customer: Do you know how to test a microwave oven to make sure the seals are working?
Barber: No, how?
Customer: You put a mobile phone in the oven and close the door. Don’t turn the microwave on, though. Then you ring the phone in the oven, and if it rings then it’s receiving a microwave signal from outside, and you know the seals are leaking!
Sacred cheese
22 May 2009
A lad from a local deli with a great sense of humour told me they had a new range of cheese in stock from Jerusalem. ‘From Jerusalem?’ I asked. ‘Yeah, Cheeses of Nazareth!’
Jaws
23 May 2009
I was talking to a pensioner one day about films. We discussed James Bond for a while, and he mentioned all his favourites.
Customer: Sean Connery was the man—a real ladies’ man. There was a big lad in some of the films—he had metal teeth, and he was much taller than Bond. He’d have been in the Roger Moore films. What was his name? I can’t remember . . .
I could see him trying hard to recall the name, and I knew who he was talking about, so I told him.
Barber: It was Jaws.
Customer: Ah, no, no, that was a different film. That was about a fish.
Cobblers
25 May 2009
Customer: Do you cut your family’s hair?
Barber: No, I cut hair all day, so when I go home I rarely pick up a scissors.
Customer: Well, you know what they say: cobblers’ children have no shoes.
Bob Monkhouse
26 May 2009
Customer: I never liked that that Bob Monkhouse fella.
Barber: Same here—don’t like a lot of those old-school English comedians.
Customer: After Bob Monkhouse died they showed some clips of interviews and jokes on Sky News, and he had this great joke that cracked me up. He’d said in an interview, ‘They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. Well, they’re not laughing now.’
‘Wonderwall’
27 May 2009
While I was cutting hair one day, the Oasis song ‘Wonderwall’ was on the radio in the background.
Barber: Hey, there’s ‘Wonderwall’ on the radio. Sounds as good as ever.
Customer: Did you hear the Ryan Adams version of it?
Barber: Yeah, I thought it was great.
Customer: A friend of mine was at the Ryan Adams gig in the Olympia, and in the middle of the gig someone shouts out, ‘Play “Summer of ’69”!’ He wasn’t impressed!
Out of shape
28 May 2009
While I was cutting a customer’s hair one day he was telling me that he had decided it was high time he got fit. His friends, who were in the shop waiting, kept mocking his resolution to get healthy. He told me at one stage that he was going to start hiking up mountains, which resulted in everyone laughing in disbelief, and one of his friends shouted out, ‘Be serious, John, you’d get altitude sickness walking up a stairs!’
Snow everywhere!
29 May 2009
Customer: My friends and I were trapped in the airport because of the heavy snow back in February. The whole airport was shut down by the heaviest snowfall in years. We only had one week off, and we were in the airport for days. We never got away in the end. It was a disaster!
Barber: Were you going somewhere sunny?
Customer: No, we were going skiing!
Barber: The irony!
A black eye from Fianna Fáil
31 May 2009
A customer with a very obvious black eye sat in the next barber’s chair.
Barber: What happened to your eye?
Customer: I was walking home the other night, the night the wind was howling, and one of the Fianna Fáil election posters blew off a pole and hit me in the face!
Everyone in the shop cracked up laughing.
Hopeless case
&
nbsp; 1 June 2009
Customer (with wild curly hair): I’m looking to do something different. It’s a real mess, isn’t it?
Barber: Well, that’s putting it mildly.
Customer: So what would you do if it was your hair?
Barber: I’d put a match to it!
Showjumping, Tallafornia style
2 June 2009
Customer: I was called out to an accident in Tallaght the other day. There was a kid riding a horse bareback, and he ran the horse at railings at the side of the road, trying to jump the rails. Well, the railings were too high for the horse, and there were spikes at the top. The horse got caught on the top of the railings!
Barber: My God, that’s terrible. Was the kid okay?
Customer: Yeah, he was thrown clear, but the horse died. It was bleeding badly when I got there. Some corporation workmen were shovelling soil over the blood that was running out onto the road. They didn’t have enough soil, and one of the men spotted a load of sand on the garden of a nearby house—they later found out it was for building a wall—and they ran over to get a few shovelfuls to throw onto the blood. There were three of them in the garden, digging their shovels in, when a window opened on the first floor. Staring out at them stood an angry woman with rollers in her hair, and she roared down to the lads below, ‘You’re not burying that horse in my bleedin’ garden!’
Just looking!
3 June 2009
Customer: I was up at a garage, looking at the cars. There are some really nice second-hand cars going for a song at the moment. So I ask this guy who was working there how much the car I was looking at cost. ‘That one is €16,599—it’s a great car!’ he tells me. So I say, ‘€16,599? I was down here yesterday, and the other guy said it was €16,399.’ The dealer stared at me for a minute, like he was about to lose his cool, having been put on the spot, and said, ‘Well, are you going to buy it or what?’ I couldn’t believe his attitude. I’m staring him right in the eye, and I say, ‘I just want to know how much it is!’
Real estate
4 June 2009
Customer: I was in Galway last week—had a great time.
Barber: It’s a great spot. I hear about it all the time— and don’t forget the Galway girls!
Customer: During the property boom, you know, some parts of Galway became as expensive as top property in Dublin, and the estate agents started calling it G4!
The way we were
5 June 2009
Customer: I remember how bad it was in Dublin in the eighties. It really was impoverished, and the streets were filthy. There was litter everywhere. I was taking some Chinese businessmen into the city centre for a meeting, and they were silent in the car, looking out the windows as we were going down the quays. They were obviously shocked by the state of the place. Then one of them asks me, ‘Is this because of the Troubles?’
B&Q
6 June 2009
A customer told me that a friend of his was in the North shopping, and he asked someone if there was a B&Q in Belfast. The man stared at him for a moment in disbelief and then said, ‘A B and Q in Belfast? Where did you learn to spell?’
Yasmina and Kate
7 June 2009
Comments on the English television series ‘The Apprentice’.
Customer: Did you see ‘The Apprentice’ last night?
Barber: Yeah, I was watching it. Really surprised Kate was in the final, but she was great. Her presentation was very good—didn’t know her profit margin, though.
Customer: Yasmina was a serious contender from the early days, though. Kate didn’t get going till later.
Barber: So you think he picked Yasmina based on the overall performance?
Customer: Either that or Sir Alan was thinking he couldn’t pick the good-looking one!
More Yasmina and Kate
8 June 2009
Customer: I couldn’t believe the job Yasmina got, putting TV screens up in hospitals to sell advertising on. I mean, that’s not cool. Did you see her face when he told her?
Barber: I know, she was stunned. I was stunned. Sir Alan is head of such a large corporation, and Yasmina went through hell to win, and then she gets to sell advertising on TV screens? That’s what my brother does, and he didn’t win anything!
A great weekend
9 June 2009
Customer: That was the best June weekend. I remember it was 29 degrees. It makes such a difference to your mood. You’d forget all your worries—well, most, anyway!
Barber: I know. It’s weather like that that makes me wish I was unemployed!
Customer: I’d be careful who you say that to if I were you!
The joy of repetition
10 June 2009
A customer told me a story of how he had worked many years ago behind the bar in a small country pub in Ireland.
The pub was always quite busy at the end of the week, and during his first week there he was taken aback by the reaction in the pub when the Angelus came on the radio at six o’clock. All the lads removed their caps and sat up, conversations stopped and pints were untouched as they all muttered the Angelus under their breath.
After he had been working there for a while he decided to record the Angelus and play it the next day one hour later, at seven, for a laugh. The tape was loaded, and the lads had been drinking. The real Angelus bells rang out at six. The pub stopped, and the few minutes were passed in quiet prayer. So at seven he played the recorded Angelus, and the exact same thing happened: all the men round the bar removed their caps and made the sign of the cross and began to murmur under their breath. He was biting his lip to stop himself laughing out loud. It was like a scene from ‘Father Ted’!
Baltimore, Co. Cork—what a place!
11 June 2009
Customer: I was down in Baltimore in west Cork for the weekend. Great place.
Barber: I hear it’s great in summer. There’s a pub called Bushe’s that people mention a lot.
Customer: Yes, I was there one night when one of the local people I was talking to told me Jeremy Irons has a castle nearby, and then a helicopter went over the bay. The lad I was talking to announced to everyone with a big grin on his face, ‘That’s Jeremy Irons going off to collect his Chinese takeaway.’
The Western burqa
12 June 2009
I was talking to an Islamic customer about the burqa. (There was a lot of discussion about it in the media at the time.) He told me that Western women wear a burqa too. ‘No they don’t,’ I said. ‘Yes they do,’ he said. ‘It’s called Max Factor.’
Aslan
14 June 2009
I was talking to a customer who had recently renovated his pub and added a new music venue at the back, and he was talking to me about getting bands in to play.
Barber: How about Aslan? They always pull a large crowd.
Customer: Aslan? Ah, no—they’re a plastic-glass gig!
Unibrow
15 June 2009
Customer: Will you trim the eyebrows for me, please? My daughter is calling me unibrow.
Barber: No problem.
Customer: I can’t do them myself, as I wear glasses and I can’t see the eyebrows in the mirror with them on ‘cause they cover them up, and if I take the glasses off, well, I’m back to square one.
Barber: Well, if you could see without the glasses it’s still not easy, as everything is backwards in a mirror, and you’re using a scissors near your eye. You could do yourself an injury!
Customer: Dangerous things, those eyebrows!
New aftershave for Travellers
16 June 2009
Customer: Did you hear about the new aftershave for Travellers?
Barber: No, what’s it called?
Customer: Howrya, boss!
Due decorum
17 June 2009
Customer (an older gent): Your birthday is coming up soon, isn’t it?
Barber: It’s at the end of the month. You have a great memory!
Customer: We must
celebrate with due decorum!
Barber: Due decorum? What’s that, a liqueur?
Downloading music
19 June 2009
Customer: Did you know it’s morally okay to illegally download Amy Winehouse’s and Pete Doherty’s music?
Barber: Why?
Customer: Because if you paid for it they’d only spend your money on drugs!
A smoking gun
20 June 2009
Customer (a guard): Years ago I was driving home after work, and I was involved in a crash. I took a while to come round, and when I did I thought I’d been shot!
Barber: Why did you think that?
Customer: Because the airbags use gunpowder to discharge, and when I came round and was semi-conscious I got this really strong smell of gunpowder, and the first thing that went through my mind was that I’d been shot!
Barber: That would put a few years on you!
Witty banner
21 June 2009
Customer: I was in town earlier, and there was a march on over the pension levy.
Barber: Oh, yeah, I heard on the news. Was there a large turnout?
Customer: Yes, there was—more than I expected. Took me ages to get down the street, but there was a banner I saw that had on it ‘Two Brians and no brains!’