History Funny / PGWodehouse

* The simple fact that there's a Wodehouse book (''Laughing Gas'') with a summary that begins with the sentence "Dirty work in the Fourth Dimension was the cause of all the trouble".

* The short story ''Concealed Art'' involves the romantic woes of a painter whose works tend towards the [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible surreal]]. He confides in his friend Reggie that he hasn't sold a single painting.
-->...I should have been far more startled if he’d told me he had sold a picture. I’ve seen his pictures, and they are like nothing on earth. So far as I can make out what he says, they aren’t supposed to be. There’s one in particular, called “The Coming of Summer,” which I sometimes dream about when I’ve been hitting it up a shade too vigorously. It’s all dots and splashes, with a great eye staring out of the middle of the mess. It looks as if summer, just as it was on the way, had stubbed its toe on a bomb. He tells me it’s his masterpiece, and that he will never do anything like it again. I should like to have that in writing.
** Archie, the painter, refuses to tell his wife that he draws newspaper comics as well as surreal paintings. This causes problems, because he's getting a steady income from the comics and nothing from the paintings. How can he explain where the money's coming from? Reggie has an idea: say a millionaire has bought "The Coming of Summer" for £2000! WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong, after all?
--> What Archie and I forgot to allow for was the fact that this thing might get into the papers.
** The papers put the story on the front page.
--> Underneath there was a column, some of it about Archie, the rest about the picture; and scattered over the page were two photographs of old Archie, looking more like Pa Doughnut than anything human, and a smudged reproduction of “The Coming of Summer”; and, believe me, frightful as the original of that weird exhibit looked, the reproduction had it licked to a whisper. It was one of the ghastliest things I have ever seen.
** Archie's thoughts on the article: "He told me afterwards that even then he had a sense of impending doom. He said he had a presentiment that there was more to come, and that Fate was just backing away and measuring the distance, preparatory to smiting him good and hard."
** "My knowledge of chappies in general, after a fairly wide experience, is that some chappies seem to kind of convey an atmosphere of unpleasantness the moment you come into contact with them. I don’t know what it is about them—maybe it’s something in the way they work their eyebrows—but directly you see them you feel that you want to get down into the bomb-proof cellar and lock the door after you."
** Archie finally tells his wife about the comics. She loves them, then admits that she's been lying too: she told him she made money from writing poetry, when she actually writes advertisements!

* Large portions of the Funny/JeevesAndWooster stories. Books with their own pages:
** ''Literature/ThankYouJeeves''
** ''Literature/TheCodeOfTheWoosters''
** ''Literature/RightHoJeeves''
** ''Literature/JeevesAndTheFeudalSpirit''
** ''Literature/JoyInTheMorning''
** ''Literature/StiffUpperLipJeeves''
** ''Literature/MuchObligedJeeves''
** ''Literature/AuntsArentGentlemen''
* Large portions of the Funny/BlandingsCastle stories.
* Large portions of the Funny/{{Psmith}} stories.
* Large portions of the Funny/{{Ukridge}} stories.

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* In the Ukridge story "The Long Arm of Looney Coote", Ukridge wants to help an old school friend, "Boko" Lawlor, who is running for parliament. The narrator, Jimmy Corcoran goes to a meeting in support of Lawlor’s candidature, and describes the speaker:
-->The principle on which chairmen at these meetings are selected is perhaps too familiar to require recording here at length, but in case some of my readers are not acquainted with the workings of political machines, I may say that no one under the age of eighty-five is eligible and the preference is given to those with adenoids. For Boko Lawlor the authorities had extended themselves and picked a champion of his class. In addition to adenoids, the Right Hon. the Marquess of Cricklewood had - or seemed to have - a potato of the maximum size and hotness in his mouth, and he had learned his elocution in one of those correspondence schools which teach it by mail. I caught his first sentence—that he would only detain us a moment—but for fifteen minutes after that he baffled me completely. That he was still speaking I could tell by the way his Adam’s apple wiggled, but what he was saying I could not even guess.

* Large portions of the Funny/JeevesAndWooster stories.

Or possibly your Gow.'

* The poem [[https://allpoetry.com/Printer's-Error- "Printer's Error"]], which is about a writer who realises that the printer of his latest novel has made a disastrous typo.[[note]]"I'd written (which I thought quite good) / 'Ruth, ripening into womanhood, / Was now a girl who knocked men flat / And frequently got whistled at', / And some vile, careless, casual gook / Had spoiled the best thing in the book / By printing 'not' / (Yes,'not', great Scott!) / When I had written 'now'." [[/note]] He buys a gun and goes in search of the offending printer:

* The poem "Printer's Error", which is about a writer who realises that the printer of his latest novel has made a disastrous typo.[[note]]"I'd written (which I thought quite good) / 'Ruth, ripening into womanhood, / Was now a girl who knocked men flat / And frequently got whistled at', / And some vile, careless, casual gook / Had spoiled the best thing in the book / By printing 'not' / (Yes,'not', great Scott!) / When I had written 'now'." [[/note]] He buys a gun and goes in search of the offending printer:

-->The principle on which chairmen at these meetings are selected is perhaps too familiar to require recording here at length, but in case some of my readers are not acquainted with the workings of political machines, I may say that no one under the age of eighty-five is eligible and the preference is given to those with adenoids. For Boko Lawlor the authorities had extended themselves and picked a champion of his class. In addition to adenoids, the Right Hon. the Marquess of Cricklewood had-or seemed to have-a potato of the maximum size and hotness in his mouth, and he had learned his elocution in one of those correspondence schools which teach it by mail. I caught his first sentence—that he would only detain us a moment—but for fifteen minutes after that he baffled me completely. That he was still speaking I could tell by the way his Adam’s apple wiggled, but what he was saying I could not even guess.

* Any time Psmith does his "the cry goes round the castle walls..."-type MadLibsCatchPhrase, especially since he usually saves it for moments when his SesquipedalianLoquaciousness is entirely inappropriate.

* Mike's first day at the bank in ''Psmith in the City'':
-->'I've come,' was the best speech he could think of. It was not a good speech. It was too sinister. He felt that even as he said it. It was the sort of thing Mephistopheles would have said to Faust by way of opening conversation.

* "PIG ''HOOO'''''EY'''!"

* A comment about pubs in ''Something Fresh'': "In English country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the innkeepers to blaming the government."

* If "Wodehouse's best" absolutely had to be picked, ''Right Ho, Jeeves'' would be a serious contender..
** The telegram war between Bertie and his Aunt Travers. Read it [[http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/wodehouse/rightho-jeeves/6/ here]], in all its glory.
--->'''Aunt Travers:''' "Deeply regret Brinkley Court hundred miles from London, as unable hit you with a brick. Love, Travers."
** Bertie and Jeeves's eyebrow competition.
--->I consulted Jeeves once more in the language of the eyebrow. He raised one of his. I raised one of mine. He raised his other. I raised my other.
--->Then we both raised both. Finally, there seeming no other policy to pursue, I flung wide the gates and Tuppy came shooting in.
--->"Now what?" I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage.
--->"Why was the door locked?" demanded Tuppy.
--->I was in pretty good eyebrow-raising form by now, so I gave him a touch of it.
** "And if I portrayed the scene with anything like adequate skill, the picture you will have retained of this Fink-Nottle will have been that of a nervous wreck, sagging at the knees, green about the gills, and picking feverishly at the lapels of his coat in an ecstasy of craven fear."
** And culminating in the aforementioned Gussie Fink-Nottle's epic drunken speech at the Market Snodsbury grammar-school prize-giving, which is often cited as Wodehouse's funniest passage.
* Cow creamer!

* The entirety of ''Joy in the Morning'' (US: ''Jeeves in the Morning''), but especially the moment at which Bertie finds himself 'a gazelle short.'
* "If that doesn't leave me without a stain on my character, well, then I don't know what it does leave me without a stain on." AAARRRRGH I FRIGGING LOVE THAT.
* The climatic [[RugbyIsSlaughter rugby match]] in ''The Ordeal of Young Tuppy:''
-->"He was so crusted with alluvial deposits that one realised how little a mere bath would ever be able to effect. To fit him to take his place once more in polite society, he would certainly have to be sent to the cleaner's. Indeed, it was a moot point whether it wouldn't be simpler just to throw him away."

--->"He was so crusted with alluvial deposits that one realised how little a mere bath would ever be able to effect. To fit him to take his place once more in polite society, he would certainly have to be sent to the cleaner's. Indeed, it was a moot point whether it wouldn't be simpler just to throw him away."

* From ''Right Ho, Jeeves'', Gussie Fink-Nottle's drunken speech at the Market Snodsbury grammar-school prize-giving is often cited as Wodehouse's funniest passage.
* Cow creamer!
* "PIG ''HOOO'''''EY'''!"
* The epic telegram war between Bertie and his Aunt Travers in ''Right Ho, Jeeves". Read it [[http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/wodehouse/rightho-jeeves/6/ here]], in all its glory.

** From the same book, Bertie and Jeeves's eyebrow competition.

-->'I've come,' was the best speech he could think of. It was not a good speech. It was too sinister. He felt that even as he said it. It was the sort of thing Mephistopheles would have said to Faust by way of opening conversation.

* The simple fact that there's a Wodehouse book (''Laughing Gas'') with a summary that begins with the sentence "Dirty work in the Fourth Dimension was the cause of all the trouble".

* Any time Psmith does his "the cry goes round the castle walls..."-type MadLibsCatchPhrase, especially since he usually saves it for moments when his SesquipedalianLoquaciousness is entirely inappropriate.

* For me, anything by PGWodehouse eventually has me laughing loudly, even on buses. This usually happens when two or three insanely complicated subplots collide, so there's no use my trying to give you quotations.
* ''From Right Ho, Jeeves'', Gussie Fink-Nottle's drunken speech at the Market Snodsbury grammar-school prize-giving is often cited as Wodehouse's funniest passage.

--->'''Aunt Travers:''' ''Deeply regret Brinkley Court hundred miles from London, as unable hit you with a brick. Love, Travers.''

-->''I consulted Jeeves once more in the language of the eyebrow. He raised
-->one of his. I raised one of mine. He raised his other. I raised my other.
-->Then we both raised both. Finally, there seeming no other policy to
-->pursue, I flung wide the gates and Tuppy came shooting in.
-->"Now what?" I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage.
-->"Why was the door locked?" demanded Tuppy.
-->I was in pretty good eyebrow-raising form by now, so I gave him a touch of it.''

-->"He was so crusted with alluvial deposits that one realised how little a mere bath would ever be able to effect. To fit him to take his place once more in polite society, he would certainly have to be sent to the cleaner's. Indeed, it was a moot point whether it wouldn't be simpler just to throw him away."