Pesky things always come in tens

Miles Kington
Sunday 13 April 1997 23:02 BST
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Ten London attractions which no Londoner can imagine any visitor in his right mind wanting to go to:

The Changing of the Guard

Hamley's

Carnaby Street

The Tower of London

Leicester Square

Oxford Street

Starlight Express

London Bridge

221b Baker Street

Foyle's

Ten colours never offered by any paint-maker's catalogue:

Earl Grey

Capability Brown

Mood Indigo

Olympic Gold

Consolation Bronze

Seville Orange

Gretna Green

Penny Black

Edmund White

Forever Amber

Ten objects commonly left sticking to the inside or outside of cars which no longer have any practical use, and indeed whose very existence has probably been forgotten by the owner:

Sign saying BABY ON

BOARD

Garfield

Furry cube

Sign saying MY OTHER

CAR IS A ...

Parking stickers which go

up and down with the driver's window inside the door until one day they never come back up again

Comic Relief Day tomato

Name of dealer or garage

where car was bought

Sticker bought at Longleat

Sign inciting you to join a rugby club you have never

heard of

Sticker telling you that if you are close enough to read this you are too close

Ten books, works or compositions which have become famous but whose authors we can almost never remember the name of:

The Adventures of Baron

Munchausen

The Swiss Family Robinson

Mary Poppins

Waltzing Matilda

La Marseillaise

Heidi

Charlie's Aunt

Onward Christian Soldiers

Lorna Doone

Pinocchio

Ten things commonly said to belong to the devil:

Devil's beef tub

Devil's elbow

Hell's teeth

A diabolical liberty

Hell's angels

A snowball in hell

Hell's bells

Devilish bad luck

Devilled kidneys

The hindmost

Ten things sometimes mistakenly thought to have been invented by and named after a Scotsman:

Macrame

Macassar oil

Maccabees

Macaroni

Machismo

Macrobiotics

Macaw

Macon wine

Machete

Machicolations

Ten products whose names seem to have absolutely no connection with the nature of the product:

Cherry Blossom shoe

polish

Wild Woodbine cigarettes

Imperial Leather soap

Kiwi shoe polish

Famous Grouse whisky

Tio Pepe ["Uncle Joe"]

sherry

Penguin books

Camel cigarettes

Robin starch

Mars bar

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