Cover Page
Title Page
Introduction
Toy Story
Zip It
The Heroic Potato
The Speculators
The Grieving Process
The Fablus Flautist
The Ear Complaint
Yorkshire Watter
You can’t cheat yer Nan
Year Zero
The Dry-Cleaner
The Crunch
Would You?
The Communication Age
The School Trip
The Comedic Properties of Fruit
Winsor
The Chocolate Teapot
Why?
Reclassifying the Kids
The Art of Luvvy
Wolves
Telegraph Road
Stranger in Town
‘Spolicy
The Man Who Has Everything
Snappy Shopper
The Washing-line of Hope
Scusting
Memorable Elephants
The Endless Queue
Two Birds Having It Off
Multicultural, innit?
The Hot Date
S&M in the High Street
Romance
Rice
Taking Stock
Public Inconvenience
Controversy
Potty
Parenthood
Over-inflated
Not the Done Thing
Nah, Mate!
Mothers
The Celebrity and the Portaloo
Tourist Information
Jimmy Scumbag’s Report
Man’s Best Friend
Tea? Coffee?
Innocence
Maltesers
History Repeating Itself
Mad as a Bee
Goths
Arsebergers
It’s the Thought That Counts
Learning by Example
Fast Food
It Takes Me Back
Esmerelda
Good Genes ain’t Everything
A Building Term
Giving Direction
Battery-powered
Generation XXX
Balham?
Gazebo
Dullest Cat Food Story in the World
Front or Back Bottom?
Death of a Hamster
Finding Sense
Don’t Go There
Focking Americans!
Bounced
Conditioning
Cheese People
As if!
Chalk
Casanova on the 137
Biting Jelly
Dimensions
Cannon Balls-up
A Good Investment
No Great Shakes
Greek
Pity
Care in the Community
Where You Hide Yourself
Offender Profile
Unexpected Delivery
The Birthday Buddy
Undersize Me
Caffé Americano
Man’s Other Best Friends
Objects of Desire
Business
Scaring the Extras
A Mother’s Lament
A Really Swish Showhome
Glee Club
Brazil Nuts
Trouble with Snails
Tough Love
The Tourists
Boys Will Be…
The Naturalist’s Needs
A Higher Power
Boing!
Too Much Information
There!
Salt of the Earth to Planet Boyfriend
The Important Stuff
A Traveller’s Tale
Come Together
Catch 23
Andy’s Do
Another Woman
Memories
Americans in London
Meat
Bliss
Microcosm
Enough Underwear
Bad Medicine
Bacteria
Into the Wild
Guántanamo
The Stuff of Dreams
Guests
Cool
A Simple Truth
A Cracking Bit of Cheese
Haggling
The Inheritance
A Generous Helping
The Suspect
The Actor Who Couldn’t
Teutonic Plates
A Song for Pyewacket
Tara’s Terror
Snippets from a Six-Year-Old
School’s Out
Sculptures
Burning Bright
Not Being Minnie Driver
Expressing Creativity
The Alison Technique
The Grass Being Greener
Mixed Messages
Milk with Three
Bladdy Tourists!
Jeffrey & the Tramp
Jessica’s News
Royal Insecurity
The Lost Aisle
Stripping Off
So, Do You Know Liam?
Ageing Michelle
Fashionable
Culture
RSVP
Santi
Taking Direction from Stanley Kubrick
The Bottom Line
The Muralist’s Tales
The Phantom Pregnancy
Two Very Different Travellers
Mental Lentils
In a Hole
Fruit
Expectations
Everybody Loves Madeira
Ten Seconds of Fame
Rabbit
The Rastafarian Good Food Guide
Charity
Get a Job
Headucation
I Wanna be Adopted
Management Material
All Change
Blackies
A Missed Opportunity
The Gen on Jenna
The Pottery Shop part 1
The Pottery Shop part 2
Social Skills
The Art Lover
Coitus Infinitum
Fair Trade
Animal Trouble
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
Neither of us is quite sure exactly when we each started making a note of other people’s conversations, foibles and quips, but it began a long time before we met.
The decision to turn our little hobby into a book itself probably started with a conversation with friends. Someone probably laughed out loud or put their hands over their mouth in delighted shock, then said something along the lines of, ‘You should write that down.’
So we did. We employed many techniques: eavesdropping, ear-wigging, a little lurking, nebbing, overhearing and snooping, to name but a few. Occasionally little nuggets have been passed down to us by conspiratorial friends who really should know better.
The result, we discovered, was a kind of kitchen sink snapshot of society caught resolutely off its guard, being real, being funny, occasionally sad—even terrifying. It spans every age, class and racial divide—a nation united in inanity.
It seems that the richest vault of human comedy and drama is around us all the time if we just stop, turn off our phones, MP3 players and laptops, and listen.
So why not just turn off, tune out and listen in? Who knows what you might be about to hear, and what you might do with it.
Mark Love & Jacqui Saunders
2008
Overheard something that you’d like to share? You can submit your own ear-wiggings at:
www.overheardconversations.com
PS Oh, just one more thing before we go…Just to make it very clear that the opinions and views expressed by the people in these conversations are absolutely NOT those of the authors or their publishers.
A town centre toy store, mid-December, and the manager and a Sales Assistant are staring intently at the stock on the shelves.
SALES ASSISTANT: Dunno what it is but Barbie’s just not going this year.
MANAGER: Hmmmm…What if we put Superman on top of Barbie? Do you think that’ll get her going?
SALES ASSISTANT: Nnnh, I don’t know…
MANAGER: No! I know! Put Barbie on top of Superman. Yeah, that should get her going!
A shop owner has been questioning her male assistant over a prolonged absence from work.
SHOP OWNER: So you’re saying you were off for three weeks because you had an accident with your zip?
ASSISTANT: It’s not funny! Little accidents can turn into something very nasty. I could have died. I was very ill, you ask Frank.
SHOP OWNER: You could have died? What actually happened?
ASSISTANT: I told you, I had an accident with my zip.
SHOP OWNER: Can you be a bit more precise? This is three weeks, not three days.
ASSISTANT: Look, I got it stuck in my zipper.
SHOP OWNER: You got your thing stuck in your zip and it took you three weeks to get over it? Marge had triplets and she was back at work six days later.
ASSISTANT: I got blood poisoning. I’ve only just got over it.
SHOP OWNER: How do you get blood poisoning from getting your thing caught in your zip?
ASSISTANT: I don’t know! But I did! It was really serious at one point. I almost died.
SHOP OWNER: Well that would have meant for an interesting obituary, wouldn’t it?