Emergency Questions: 1001 conversation-savers for any situation, from the British comedian

by Richard Herring

301. If you had to drink the entire contents of a well-stocked sperm bank or be placed in a coma for ten years where everyone thinks you’re not conscious, but you can actually hear and feel everything – if you had to – which option would you take? Rich: I’d drink the spunk. You’d be doing a fair amount of that in the coma I’d warrant anyway.

306. If you could swap a TV show that went on for too long with one that was cancelled too soon (i.e. the series that was cancelled would get the extra series), which shows would you choose? Rich: I would give the last four series of Last of the Summer Wine to get four more series of Freaks and Geeks.

307. If you had to invent a fifth season, which two other seasons would you put it between and what would happen in it?

312. How many weeks would you have to attend Roman Catholic Holy Communion before you had eaten an entire Jesus? Please show your working.

313. Would you rather be lactose intolerant or the Prime Minister of the Central African Republic?

317. Would you rather be a bee or a butterfly?

318. If you could turn anyone in your family into an animal, which family member would you choose and what animal would they become?

324. Who is the silliest person that you know? What is the silliest thing they have done?

325. If you could poo any substance instead of poo, what substance would you poo?

328. If you had to have an insect living in your nostril – if you had to – which insect would you choose? NB For the purposes of this question arachnids do classify as insects, but what kind of lunatic would want a spider living in their nostril?

330. What do you think the tooth fairy is doing with all those teeth?

331. Would you prefer to eat nothing but chocolate or be able to read people’s minds?

332. Have you ever seen Father Christmas in the summertime, walking around in normal clothes, pretending he’s not him? Rich: Yes, I saw him the other day. He’d trimmed his beard down to a goatee, but he wasn’t fooling anyone.

334. If you had to make up a superhero, what would their name be and what would their superpower be?

335. If you had to hide an elephant in your house, where would you put it?

352. What age does someone have to be to be properly old?

353. Would you rather have a ten-minute bath in cat wee or a two-minute shower in bat poo?

403. Would you rather have a hand made out of sand or a bum that was a drum?

427. What was the best jacket potato you’ve ever eaten? Rich: It was in the Old Fire Station in Oxford in 1988. It was so good that the next week I took a girl I was trying to impress on a date there to eat a jacket potato. She was not impressed.

761. Does it freak you out that in the cartoon The Snowman the little boy is supposed to be David Bowie? Do you think it really happened to him? It would explain a lot.

806. Would you rather eat 1000 holly berries or one Halle Berry? 807. Have you ever incensed a Frank?

830. Do you think a concerted analytic-based campaign on social media could convince turkeys to vote for Christmas? Rich: The evidence of the last few years suggests so.

986. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, does it use its branches like arms to lessen the impact of the fall?