Words: butter, n.

Christopher Hawtree
Friday 22 January 1999 01:02 GMT
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"DO YOU want butter on it?" asked the man in a Brighton sandwich- shop. "Yes, please." With which, he dug his knife into a tub of grease which I could not believe was butter. "Is that margarine?" "Yes." "But you just asked if I wanted butter." "I know," he said, knife aloft, "it's a figure of speech, isn't it?"

No arguing with that (but why is it yellow, not blue or green?) - but there in the fridge was some butter, wrapper folded along most of the craggy edge. "Look, there's real butter, under your nose!" "It's hard, for melting in baked potatoes." "You don't put margarine in the potatoes?" "No," he replied in surprise, "you can't put margarine in potatoes." If the Mad Hatter had tendered for outside caterers, this would have been the man for the job.

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