Guy is an expert on all aspects of High Street Britain’s funny shop names. From truly awful, cringe-inducing howlers to genuinely inventive and original shop fronts, he has researched, found and photographed them all. He has also interviewed the shopkeepers in a bid to find the reasoning or madness behind these amusing store fronts.
This quirky quest has taken him on over 4,000 miles through 340 cities, towns and villages across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He returned with a photo collection of over 600 shop fronts. Only the very best of these were admitted to the hall of name and shame that is Shop Horror.
Guy was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book and why it exists. Hopefully this will be the first of a few interviews with important persons in the world of wordplay.
Guy, thanks so much for taking the time to answer some questions. First off, can you tell us a bit about yourself.
I am a TV producer by trade. I was born in Manchester but now live in London.
Have you always been interested in puns?
Yes. I love language and my interest in puns is part of my love of language. Puns get a bad press because they can be very corny and make you cringe. But underlying some puns are some incredibly sophisticated linguistic manipulations.
How did the idea for the book come about?
I’ve always had an interest in jokes that some people think are funny but which others think are terrible. So I started off making fun of bad hair salon names like Hair Razors, Curl Up and Dye and Short Cuts. I thought they were terrible and I wanted to hold them up as an example of bad jokes and terrible shop names. But in looking for them, I started to find really inventive ones such as British Hairways, Lunatic Fringe and Hair-O-Dyenamix. I then found other types of shop with brilliant names. So although I started by making fun of them, I ended up loving these truly amusing shop names. It’s a loving celebration of eccentric British humour.
What is your favourite shop included in the book?
There's so many good ones it's hard to pick a favourite. But if I had to choose, I'd go for the second hand record shop called The Vinyl Resting Place.
Were the owners you approached very forthcoming about the whole thing?
Most were very welcoming and were only too happy to have their shop snapped and to talk about their business. A few less enlightened ones became paranoid that someone wanted to take a photo of their shop.
What do you think constitutes the perfect pun?
The perfect pun is one that relies on a homonym or on the double meaning of one word or expression. Homonyms are two or more words that have the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings (eg “pole” meaning long stick and “pole” meaning north or south pole). I consider these puns perfect because the double meaning is achieved with no change in spelling or pronunciation.
eg “If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”
This line by Groucho Marx (as borrowed for the title of a 1970s single by the Bellamy Brothers) relies on the double meaning of the expression “to hold something against someone”. The humour lies not only in the clever use of a double meaning but also in the contrast between the innocent purported use of the expression “hold it against me” (ie would you hold a grudge) and the cheeky meaning snuck in between the lines (ie to physically hold your body against me).
There is a scale of puns which has the perfect homonym pun at the top. Next down the scale (ie one step less perfect) is the homophone pun (ie words that sound the same but are spelt differently). The further we get away from the perfect pun, the less sophisticated the word play. However, more sophisticated word play is not always that funny. Our response is often an academic appreciation of the punster's word power or the coincidence of double meaning. The less sophisticated the pun the funnier it becomes, up to a point at which the pun fails for being too silly. Look at the scale of puns exemplified below by reference to the Dickens novel Great Expectations
Homonym pun
Great Expectations (maternity wear shop)
Homophone pun
Grate Expectations (fire place shop)
Near Rhyme Pun
Gate Expectations (gate shop)
Far Rhyme Pun
Plate Expectations (crockery shop)
Thanks again to Guy for contributing to my little corner of the internet. You can read a bit more about Shop Horror at the official website shophorror.co.uk, and it's available from all good bookshops.
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