Sweet Revenge: 200 Delicious Ways to Get Your Own Back

conference in Yorkshire.
    His day of departure came and she had enormous fun following him round the house as he became more and more frantic in his search for his passport. He couldn't tell his wife what he was looking for and she was being overly helpful, secure in the knowledge that he would never look in the box of Tampax where she had hidden it.
     

     
    An Englishman was travelling through France some years ago. He knew he would be in Reims that night but would arrive late, so he telephoned a hotel to make the appropriate arrangements. He would like, he insisted, a room with a bathroom en suite. When he arrived at the hotel at around midnight, he was shown to his room and
    - no bathroom. He asked for a different room but no room with bathroom was available. Not having a choice he reluctantly moved in.
    In the wee hours of the morning he felt the call of nature. The little handbasin would suit one purpose but there were other pressing matters. Spying a plant, he checked out the pot. Sure enough, it had not been watered for some time and the whole plant, earth and all, came out quite easily when lifted. He squatted over the pot and relieved himself, after which he squished the plant back in.
    A couple of weeks later, when he was back in England, he received a letter from the hotel which went: 'Dear Sir, Since your stay with us in May we have been unable to rent out the room because of the smell. We know what it is, we would just be grateful if you could tell us where it is.'
     

     
    A group of bright young things in Lausanne took a chalet in the Alps for the whole winter for holidays and weekends. A young lady who was a regular member of the houseparty started to get on everyone's nerves: she was always complaining, being the party pooper and generally making herself unpopular. They decided one night that enough was enough - action was needed. They took her lovely Alpha Romeo and, with a lot of spadework, buried it under a man-made snowdrift. She only found it in the Spring when the snows melted.
     

     
    Everybody on the holiday loathed the muscle-bound oaf (MBO) who strutted around the pool each day, flexing his pectorals and preening himself. He would lean against a surf-board or stand legs-apart-hands-on-hips like some ghastly parody of Baywatch, always in a prominent position so that the maximum number of people could admire him.

     
    Everyone groaned as each morning, when enough people were occupying the easy chairs on the sun deck, the MBO would start his morning exercise ritual - one hundred press-ups, sit-ups, lean-and-stretch, with the morning sun glinting off his well-oiled, firm body.
    Then, the body-building completed, he would strut to the end of the high diving-board, bounce rather beautifully and perform an irritatingly perfect somersault flip into the water with minimum splash and maximum grace.
    Tired of having the metaphorical sand kicked in their eyes the other lads plotted his downfall.
    The following morning the MBO appeared again, bronzed and beautiful. The routine began: the flexing, the pumping. Glistening, he walked to the diving-board and started his bounce. When he landed he slipped dramatically and undecorously, landed on the board on his bottom and fell into the water with an enormous and undignified splash, arms and legs flailing.
    In unison the lads roared with laughter. They had coated the board with sun oil and the slick had made his performance anything but.
     

     
    An Englishman was standing behind an American in a queue checking in for a flight. The American was giving the poor check-in girl the full works - 'How can it be late? I need to be in Denver today, not tomorrow! Do you call this service? Whaddaya mean you won't upgrade me? Call yourself an airline?'
    The Englishman was dazzled by her calm and sweet, sweet smile throughout the tirade. When it came to his turn, he asked her how she had remained so relaxed
    throughout his heated monologue. 'Don't worry,' she replied, 'I decided very early on that his luggage was going to Stuttgart.'

     
    A man was to spend a weekend abroad with someone he did not like and he was taking with him a visitor. To liven things up he told the visitor that his host was very deaf. He also told the host that his guest was deaf.
    They spent the weekend shouting at each other.

     
     

Acting Up
     

     
    'No one delights more in vengeance than a woman.'
    Juvenal, A.D. C.60-C.130
     

Acting Up
     
    Derek Nimmo tours the Middle and Far