Some more people you have never heard of...

Keith 'The Beef' Paxo

For years, Keith Paxo told everyone he met that he was the guy who played the kazoo on The Beatles' "Back in the USSR", and for many years he was ridiculed by people who told him that "Back in the USSR" did not feature a kazoo. He was vindicated when the 50th anniversary edition of The White Album was released and his contribution could finally be heard on the remixed version of the song. He can also be heard faintly in the background on "Happiness is a Warm Gun", asking Yoko if she wants salt and vinegar on her chips.

Professor Lorna Substrate

One of the leading biochemists of her generation, Professor Substrate was to the frozen pea what Gordon Parasite was to the aluminium stepladder. Or if you prefer, what Ringo Mezzanine-Amanuensis was to the semi-translucent artificial donkey cover. Take your pick.

Big Dave Tallywacker IV

They didn't call him Big Dave Tallywacket IV for nothing. Oh no, they called him that because that's what it said on the name tag sewn into his underpants. And woe betide anyone who called him anything different.

Sir Dougal Poptart

Not the inventor of the pop tart - that was named in his honour sometime after his demise. Sir Dougal Poptart dedicated his life to climbing drainpipes in Edinburgh. He was a familiar sight to residents, who would often see him grinning through their bedroom windows in the middle of the night, looking windswept and ill. There is a statue of him in Princes Street, but you'll have to look up if you want to see it.

Pancho Simpson

One of the key figures in the Mexican Revolution, Mr Simpson is perhaps not as widely celebrated as some of his fellow revolutionaries because for the duration of the conflict he lived in High Wycombe and never travelled further than Princes Risborough. But hey, someone has to stay at home and sort out the fliers, yeah?

Katy Van Mousecarpet

If you have ever used the phrase "there's no time like the present", then you have Katy Van Mousecarpet to thank, for it was she who devised it. And if you have never used the phrase "there's no time like the present" and you are seriously considering using the phrase "there's no time like the present" then might I suggest that there's no time like the present to start using it.

Mousecarpet used to say it quite a lot, to the point where she had no time left to do anything else. Her friends and family believed that her love of the phrase was a thinly veiled cover for procrastination. Of course, Einstein's theories have since demonstrated that Mousecarpet's thoughts about time are largely inaccurate, but the phrase nevertheless retains a sense of whimsical charm.

Romulus Pervert

A Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, coming somewhere between the funny one with the lisp and the one with the banjo. Romulus's great contribution was the shoe buckle, which at long last solved the problem of keeping one's sandals on one's feet. Prior to this, Rome's streets were perpetually littered with discarded footwear, which hampered public transport and encouraged vermin. He also claimed to have invented the stick, but modern historians now believe that the stick predates the Roman Empire by several hundred years.

Emerson Humpback

Emerson "Clickety-Click" Humpback was the inventor of the retractable pen, and it is thanks to him that generations of schoolchildren have been able to drive their teachers to distraction by sitting at the back of the class and going "click-click-click-click". Humpback struggled for many years to perfect his invention, his chief problem being to find a spring that was capable of retracting the inner "payload" of the pen, but without being so strong that it fired it straight out of the back of the casing and into the wall behind him. His workshop is now a museum, and if you pay it a visit, you'll be able to see many of his early prototypes still embedded in the ceiling.

Taken from The University of the Bleeding Obvious Annual 2022
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