Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena

by Philomena Cunk

I hope that this book will provide ‘food for thought’, which is the scientific word for mind sausages,

Books are like the internet but all in one order and they still work in a tunnel.

Eve got in trouble straight away for eating an apple that belonged to God. If he was that fussed about it, he should have put a post-it note on it, like you do in an office fridge. Idiot.

Alexander the Great was born in 356 in Ancient Greece and died at the age of 32BC,

he invaded literally everywhere that anyone had heard of.

To be frank, the Greek myths get a bit confusing here, but he’s in most of them.

He was called ‘the Great’ because nobody had invented surnames and they needed a way of telling him apart from the other Alexanders,

there’s more world now, thanks to global warming.

In fact, the only trustworthy written accounts we have of this time are the adventures of Bilbo Baggins.

Insects are the smallest creatures in the world, and mainly look like punctuation with legs.

Everyone agrees that the worst insects are flies, and the best ones are butterflies. You can make most things better by adding butter (mashed potato, fried bread, Wotsits, etc.).

Caterpillars are like insects, except they’re more like a haunted sleeping bag.

Moths are like the BBC4 version of butterflies – a bit more boring, and mainly on at night.

One of the greatest sights in nature is a pride of moths dragging a subdued light bulb back to their nest to feed to their moth cubs.

Tigers are the ones who look like an orange barcode with teeth.

In the wild, tigers tend to eat more meat and less Frosties.

Archaeology is the science of finding things that people in the past hid in the ground.

Some people, like the Romans, even buried themselves in the ground using volcanoes.

The most famous archaeologists of all time are Tony Robinson and Indiana Jones. The interesting thing about Tony Robinson and Indiana Jones is that they both either wear that hat, or have a mate who wears that hat.

It’s why if an archaeologist loses his hat, he has to dive back into the collapsing temple to rescue it, like Tony Robinson’s mate is doing all the time.

He’d point at them and say they smelled. ‘You reeker,’ he’d shout. Which became his catchphrase.

Before architecture, there was caves. You didn’t build a cave, you just found it. And sometimes it was full of bears, which made it hard to put up wallpaper.

Buildings don’t just grow out of the ground, like flowers or lamp-posts.

Learning to turn into an architect takes seven years, which is even longer than it takes to turn into a wizard.

Goth architecture is all castles and is mainly for Frankingsteins. It’s meant to frighten you. Even Notre Dame, France’s most important church, is Goth. And that’s because French God is more frightening than British God, because he smokes.

in the year 9/11, two aeroplanes bumped into some tall glass buildings because they couldn’t see them, and some people started to wonder whether tall buildings were such a good idea at all. The answer was yes. So we’ve built loads more.

There’s some restaurant on the fifty-second floor of the Shard. All the food has to be brought up here in lifts, which means you can go there and eat the highest potato in Britain.

Who knows, with skyscrapers all over the world getting taller and taller, one might even reach heaven. And one day, we might be able to sit in the top floor restaurant and eat our soup with an amazing view – of God.

The best artists are the ones who can nearly make you think the thing in the painting is a real one. It’s a trick, like Dynamo might do, but it’s basically a lie. People don’t like liars, which is why most artists earn no money and eventually starve to death.

The first artist to work out how to do bums properly was Michael Angelo. He did loads of bums and was even asked to paint bums on the roof of the Pope’s house. That’s Catholics for you.

there are millions of planets we’ve never even seen, and are unlikely to ever visit, but which scientists won’t stop banging on about.

There used to be nine planets in the solero system, but scientists recently found out they’d made a cock-up and one of them, Pluto, was not a planet after all, but Mickey Mouse’s dog.

Why it’s impossible to visit other planets • easyJet don’t go there.

Atoms are the smallest things that there are or can be, except for the smaller things that are inside atoms, apparently. I mean, FFS.

On average, when you think about it, that means every thing is mainly nothing, so it’s surprising all the fuss that’s made about shoplifting.

Australia’s chief industry is spiders. Other countries have to import dangerous animals, but Australia makes all its own, which is handy because it’s so far away that if they had to order their poisonous snakes from Amazon, they’d be dead by the time the package arrived.

Priests these days have to be careful about proposing any sort of bangs because they might be misunderstood for perverts.

Imagine Bake Off without Sue, rather than without Mel and Sue.

Absolute sacrelidge XD

Books are sometimes sold in bookshops, which are shops. Shops are like the real-life version of the internet, but where you can buy less stuff, and you have to leave your house to get there. It’s hard to work out why anyone bothers.

Cars are small buses that you can drive yourself.

oven for petrol,

The burning petrol scares the wheels, which...

The car was invented in prehistoric times, but because nobody had invented petrol, it worked by putting your feet through the bottom and running

the golden age of motoring, which is what they used to call traffic.

Trains use up less resources than other forms of transport because they tend to be cancelled, which is better for the planet.

encourages more people to leave their cars at home and get the train, which they can’t, because there isn’t one.

leave the butterflies alone.

looks like it belongs in one of them wonky dreams you have when you’ve got flu.

FIREMAN SAM A show about how accident-prone the Welsh are.

NO ONE EVER MENTIONS SAUSAGES