• Message from James Clarke













    "South Africa's Best Humour Columnist"
    - SA's Comedy Awards September 2008

    “South Africa’s funniest columnist.”
    - Financial Mail

    Please forgive the little boasts at the top of this column. You see I am not famous enough to be modest. And that second unsolicited quote comes from the literary critic of a rival group so who am I to argue anyway?

    Having said that, welcome to my blogsite! Please come in and close the door.
    Let me introduce myself: I was for 30 years a science writer on South Africa’s foremost daily newspaper, The Star, Johannesburg, dealing with environmental matters, urban and rural.

    Sixteen years ago The Star persuaded me to write a daily humour column. It's called Stoep Talk ( “Stoep” being a veranda in South Africa).

    I also write for various journals and have had several books published.

    I’m still not entirely sure what a blogsite is except it’s a sort of cross between a website and, I think, a Schnauzer and my friends insist I must have one.

    For some reason it is customary in blogsites and websites to refer to oneself in the third person and so, with my permission (thank you so much) I will, from now on, refer to myself as Clarke.

    You will find on this site some of my – sorry, I mean Clarke's - columns and also an idea of some of Clarke’s books and something about the fellow.

  • HOT OFF THE PRESS !!

















    James Clarke’s latest book, Blazing Saddles (Jonathan Ball publishers), is the hilarious story – a true adventure – involving six men in various stages of decrepitude who, on a sudden whim, decide to embark on a 1 000km cycle ride down the River Danube . None had cycled since childhood – nor even owned a bicycle.

    The story, reminiscent of Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat – is told by their not terribly good leader, James Clarke.

    The ride which passed through four countries became known as the Tour de Farce.

    The Tour de Farce has since become an annual event and Blazing Saddles recounts the team’s adventures in France, Italy, Ireland and their ride from the source of the Thames, through the middle of London, down to the North Sea.

    Available from bookshops and Kalahari.net

WHAT YOU ONABOUT NOW FRO PETE’;S SAKE?

Posted on June 21, 2008 by James Clarke

(Written in the days when e-mail first became part of our lives)
  
GOOD MORNING, MR CLARKE!
These unsolicited words appeared spontaneously on my pc screen at home.
WhO is thas? (I asked. I have a lot of finger trouble with computer keyboards which were developed by the Japanese for small women typists whose hands are specially bound into [...]

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The Tragedy of the Supermarket Trolleys

Posted on June 13, 2008 by James Clarke

Most people over 30 will recall when wire supermarket trolleys were everywhere. They are now an endangered species.
In 1994 Rick Raubenheimer of Hurlingham, Johannesburg , told Stoep Talk how he discovered, well upstream along the Braamfontein Spruit, a wire supermarket trolley lying on its side in the grass. It was quite a distance from the Sandton [...]

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Here We Go Gathering Mutts in May

Posted on June 7, 2008 by James Clarke

 
 A changing characteristic in people today is their relationship with dogs. Around the mid 1900s people kept dogs as pets. Now more and more are keeping them as deterrents against burglars. They are going in for Seriously Big Dogs, but not out of a love for such dogs – it is simply because the law [...]

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