Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Bingle Bongle Bangle Bungle

It appears my dear friend and fellow Twittererer, Dame Stephen Fry of Hatstand, is another coffee drinker.

Yes, they're all it. Coffee is everywhere (including here). But what do we really know about "coffee"? I decided to check out the facts, and then relay them here so that you can read the words and then use your mind to apply the appropriate semantics.

  • Coffee (pronounced "kor-foo") was invented in 1833 by Sir Bernard Coffee, who won the idea in a game of latenight backgammon from His Royal Highness the Chaka of Khan
  • Major coffee-producing countries include Mexico, Belgium, Siam and - of course - Narnia
  • The coffee refining process, perfected over centuries by successive generations of Zorro, is very complicated and involves a sophisticated variety of tubes, bunsen burners and spirit levels
  • The essence of coffee is extracted from the stalks of wild burberry mushrooms, which can only be found on the most inaccessible slopes of Mount Corbett
  • It takes more than 16 tonnes of burberry mushrooms to produce just one cup of pure coffee, at a staggering cost of £16,900
  • Which is why chains like Starbucks often cut their coffee with cheaper ingredients like gravy, boot polish and cement
  • Coffee is enjoyed by literally hundreds of people as far and wide as Tokyo, Towecester and Twyford Zoo, where bus loads of schoolchildren delight at the antics of the coffee-drinking chimpanzees (unaware, perhaps, that their caffeine-fuelled shenanigans are anything but. Chimpanzees have been drinking decaffeinated coffee since 1967 to comply with EU primate/beverage-related legislation. It's for similar reasons that you will never see a chimpanzee drink a real cuppa soup.)
  • Prince Charles of Belgravia currently holds the world record for drinking the most coffee in one sitting. In 1971 he drank 7 cups in just under 3 hours.

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