Do Ghosts Have Bum Holes?

Warming Up

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It seems like I am being inspired to do some actual work done(puppets, snooker, stones and talking shit with comedians doesn't count) and today I not only got round to putting up light shades and pictures in our living room (we've only been living here 11 months) but I sat down at my desk and got working on an idea I had a few years ago "Impossible Questions from Kids".

The genesis of this idea can be explained in the introduction I wrote (for a book, but I also want to do this as a podcast)

It was 6.30am and I was- not unreasonably- asleep in bed, when my then four-year-old son shook me awake. “Dad,” he shouted urgently, “Dad?”

“What is it?” I spluttered, half-awake and half-asleep. Was the house on fire? He certainly seemed alarmed enough for it to be something that serious.

“Do ghosts have bum holes?” he asked.

Now, that one would be a tough one to answer at any time of the day, and before I could think to postulate a response, I had questions of my own swirling around my head.

Principally “What on earth has made you ask that question?” Also, “What have you just seen?” and mainly,“Why couldn’t this wait until I am awake?”

It was an excellent question though and one that I confess I had never considered. As a diligent father I want to do my best to answer anything my kids ask me, as honestly as is reasonable, but like every parent the children will ask me questions that are beyond my pay grade (“How does electricity work?), difficult to answer for various reasons (“How does the Easter Bunny make her eggs?”) and as in the case of this early morning alarm call, actively impossible.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it though. I’d never heard of a ghost showing it’s bum hole. Indeed, most ghosts seem to have clothes on, so it’s very hard to tell. Are ghosts able to take their trousers down if they wish? Even if they aren’t, is there a bumhole still in their pants? You can see right through them, of course and yet you don’t generally see their internal organs, so are they just a photocopy of their external part and what they looked like when they died and thus anything that wasn’t on the outside no longer exists? Also why do you not hear about more naked ghosts? A lot of people must die with no clothes on, yet every ghost I’ve heard of is clothed. Are the nude ones just too embarrassed to come out?

I spluttered out an answer. I don’t even remember what I said, but I know that Ernie left unsatisfied. And I never got to find out if he’s just been mooned by a ghoulie.

There’s lots of questions that your kids ask you that you can look up on the internet (or in an encyclopaedia if you’re weird) and get a definitive answer. Where do you go for the impossible questions?

I thought it would be a good idea to create a resource where parents could suggest impossible questions and I could research these questions and talk to experts and attempt to provide a definitive answer. I set up a Twitter account (sorry, not going to call it by it’s new name) to see if other parents had impossible questions and discovered it wasn’t just me being plagued by this stuff, like:

If no-one made God, and He's always been there, then how did He get there in the first place?

Will Father Christmas Die? What if the world gets sucked into a black hole?

If you had a middle hand, what side would the thumb be on?

The Twitter account is still there and I've already got some great questions. And unusually about 15 minutes of starting that account I got a tweet asking me about making it into a book. Eventually I would get an offer from a different publisher, but I don't think they appreciated the amount of work and research and interviewing experts that would have to be done and the fee wasn't enough to make it worthwhile.

A ghost with an eye for a bum hole (my researcher, Alex Hiscock is very good)

Now I have a slightly different mindset about that and I am happy to do the work for a podcast and write a book version at the same time and see what happens.

Anyway, I made some progress and contacted the guy who did the brilliant research for my Bollock book (and has already sent me some good stuff about ghosts and bumholes).

If you have any questions that are genuinely from kids and basically impossible to answer (I don't mind having the occasional one that has a definitive answer, but it's better if, like ghostly bumholes, we have to find the solution ourselves), then please tweet it here.

Or if Twitter isn't your thing then email me at herring1967@gmail.com. By sending a question you are giving permission for me to use it in any medium I see fit, but if it's good enough, I will do my best to get an answer for you.

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I went to the funeral of an extraordinary man today, Pathmanathan Mylvaganam, who we knew as Uncle Pat, who had an enormously positive impact on my wife's family and as became clear during the service, an awful lot of other people too. Generous, passionate, fighting for what he believed in and slightly off his rocker, I only knew him for the last 15 or so years of his 93, but the general feeling was that he had been taken too young. He remained mentally sharp and full of future to the end. There were many emotional tributes and it reminded me that I better start doing some nice things soon or my own funeral is going to be a tearless affair where no one really has much to say.

Funerals are almost the perfect place for comedy, as generally speaking you're not supposed to laugh, so you get to experience that rare pleasure of being in pain from trying not to laugh. Pain overwhelmed the comedy today, which was a slight pity - Pat did much to laud, but I remember him laughing and being silly. We did get a couple of funny stories amongst the tributes.

The service opened with a beautiful Sri Lankan song being played in, a female voice singing it. It was very atmospheric. But also very long. And there was just enough of a pause between verses to make it feel like the song had ended, only for it to carry on. It was a very long song, so every time it started up again I wanted to laugh (but resisted - as it would be have been inappropriate on many levels). But if you want a good prank at a funeral (and I'd love this to happen at mine) then play a song like this for as long as you can and see how long it takes for people to get uncomfortable and complain. I think it would be ages.

The celebrant eventually started, but the music started up again (I think accidentally) and he skilfully faded it out.

No one laughed. It wasn't, as it turned out a very laughy ceremony. But it was a good one.

The sat nav took us on an unusual route to Oxford where the ceremony was taking place and we passed through Buckingham. I don't think I've ever been to Buckingham (I usually find out I've gigged there when I say something like this) and was actually genuinely surprised that a place called Buckingham actually existed. I know there's a palace and a dukedom and a county named after Buckingham, but it had never occurred to me that there might be an actual place called Buckingham. It was like finding out Narnia was real. How have I never (in my fading memory) been to Buckingham? Why did I not realise it was real?

Is it real? Or does it just appear once every thousand years? You will never convince me that Buckingham is an actual place, not from a fairy tale. So don't even try.

The second part of the remarkable RHLSTP with the incredible Bernie Clifton is now up here.

Come and see RHLSTP live.