Kummerspeck (“grief bacon”) is German for the weight put…

“As a baby, Oliver Cromwell was abducted by his grandfather’s pet monkey.”

— John Lloyd

“James Joyce married a woman named Nora Barnacle. She once said to him, ‘Why don’t you write books people can read?”

— John Lloyd

“Tour de France riders need to eat the equivalent of 27 cheeseburgers a day.”

— John Lloyd

“There is no known scientific way of predicting earthquakes. The most reliable method is to count the number of missing cats in the local…

— John Lloyd

“Where does Chicken Tikka Masala come from? Glasgow.”

— John Lloyd

Jokes are a lot about meaning. I think if we understand what jokes mean and why they work, we'd understand everything else. Genuinely I…

— John Lloyd

“Only 2% of women describe themselves as beautiful.”

— John Lloyd

“About 200,000 academic journals are published in English each year. The average number of readers per article is five.   The average numbers of…

— John Lloyd

“When John Hetherington ventured out in public wearing the first top hat, it was considered so shocking that children screamed, women fainted, and a…

— John Lloyd

“In Switzerland, it is illegal to keep just one guinea pig.”

— John Lloyd

“Robert Burns was never called Rabbie or Robbie—though he did occasionally call himself Spunkie.”

— John Lloyd

The universe is fractal. The closer you look at it, the more interesting it becomes.

— John Lloyd

“British spies stopped using semen as invisible ink because it began to smell if it wasn’t fresh.”

— John Lloyd

“You are 14% more likely to die on your birthday than any other day. 51”

— John Lloyd

I still don't like authority exercised without reason. But they laugh at you at Cambridge if you say that sort of thing. For them,…

— John Lloyd