Quotes from John Lloyd

Albanian dogs go "ham ham." In Catalan, dogs go "bup bup." The Chinese dogs say "wang wang," the Greek dogs go "gav gav," the Slovenians "hov hov," and the Ukrainians "haf haf." In Iceland, it's "voff," in Indonesia, it's "gong gong," and in Italian, it's "bau bau.

In Switzerland, it is illegal to keep just one guinea pig.

In Spanish, the word esposas means both 'wives' and 'handcuffs'.

Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo all mean 'capital' in their respective languages.

There is more information in one edition of the New York Times than the average person in 17th-century England would have come across in a lifetime.

Pedants should be aware that the English name for the world's highest mountain should be spoken aloud as EEV-uh-rest, not EV-uh-rest.

These are my confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it is because I have nothing to say.

All blue-eyed people are mutants. The first ones appeared as recently as 5,000 years ago.

Children called Joseph, Cameron, William and Jake are naughtier than those called Jacob, Daniel, Thomas and James.

Women look their oldest at 3.30 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Just like humans, British cows moo in accents specific to their region.

The world's population spends 500,000 hours a day typing Internet security codes.

If you could fold a piece of paper 51 times, its thickness would exceed the distance from here to the Sun.

Zischeln is a useful German verb meaning "to whisper angrily.

British moths include the Uncertain, the Confused, the Magpie, the Lackey, the Drinker, the Streak, the Ruddy Highflyer, the Buff Arches, the Figure of Eighty, the Anomalous, the Dark Dagger, the Lettuce Shark, the Isabelline Tiger, the Waved Tabby and the Mother Shipton.

If you have a pizza with radius z and thickness a, its volume is pi*z*z*a.

What is literally the most misused word in the English language? The word 'literally' has been used to mean its opposite for over 200 years.

The name 'United Nations' was Franklin D. Roosevelt's idea. He rushed to tell Winston Churchill, who was towelling himself stark naked in his bathroom.

Caffeine is made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen: the same as cocaine, thalidomide, nylon, TNT and heroin.

The other Andamanese languages have no known relatives. They have five numbers: one, two, one more, some more, and all. On

Misophonia n. Irrational rage and terror caused by the sound of people eating.

The Republic of Ireland didn't have postcodes until 2015.

Babbage was a brilliant mathematician but found human beings difficult to deal with. His intolerance of street musicians led to an organized campaign against him: his London home in Portland Place was bombarded by noise at all hours and abusive signs were hung in local shops.

Portugal is the only country in the world where all drugs are legal.