Puns

The puntastic pleasures of wordplay

If you tweeted about a particular snooker referee being the ex-boyfriend of one of the women in The Human League, and a friend of yours replied with ‘Don’t cue want me baby?’, how would you react? Would you groan, sneer and dismiss the pun as the lowest form of wit? Or would you – like me – laugh out loud and feel a surge of joy at the beauty of the wordplay? If the latter, come and stand with me in defence of puns. Not in a ‘guilty pleasure’ way, either, but as a proud statement that puns are wonderful and important. I hate the snobbery that surrounds puns, the