Jokes and Stories from this months issue.

*THOSE OF YOU old enough to remember the funeral of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963 at Arlington Cemetery in Washington , may also recall the image of his son ‘John John'. It was 25 November and JFK Junior's third birthday. He saluted the coffin as it went past on its final journey. That TV image of a little boy saying a final farewell to his dead father was shown live across the USA and subsequently to millions worldwide. It remains one of the most poignant memories of a sad day. JFK had been the first Catholic president of Irish descent; was the youngest to be inaugurated at 43 and was also the youngest to die in office when he was gunned down in Dallas at the age of 46.

JFK Junior was also destined to live a short but turbulent life. He died aged just 38 when the light aircraft he was piloting crashed into the sea off Long Island Sound on Friday 17 July 1999. His wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette died with him. It seems that his engine did not cut out: his Piper Saratoga aircraft hit the sea at full throttle, the propeller still turning fast. The pilot was either disorientated, or had lost control. The trio had been heading for Martha's Vineyard and took off from Caldwell , New Jersey at 8.45pm (20.45hrs) local time, and were due to arrive at their destination two hours later. Footage from FTC radar screens at the island's airport showed that the plane was making a normal descent towards land when it plunged from 2,200 to 1,300 feet in under 12 seconds. Then it hit the water and disappeared from the screens. Coastguards said that they picked up a signal from an emergency beacon in the sea off the eastern tip of Long Island , along Mr Kennedy's flight path. Rescue crews were dispatched immediately, but no subsequent signal was heard.

JFK Junior had been planning to attend the marriage of a cousin to Rory, the daughter of the late Senator Robert F Kennedy (1925-1968) in Hyannis Port. The FAA said that Mr Kennedy had completed just 46 hours of flying time since obtaining his pilot's licence in April 1998 and rarely flew alone. He also had his left leg in a cast from a paragliding accident that he admitted made it almost impossible to manage the flight controls of his private aircraft. But with typical Kennedy bravado – a mixture of recklessness and arrogance – he was still determined to fly to the wedding. You have to wonder if the man had a death wish.

JFK Junior was never comfortable with his fame, and unlike his famous uncles, never entered politics, though he did edit a political magazine. He once told reporters “The answers to the most frequently asked personal questions aimed at me are as follows: Yes. No. We are merely good friends. None of your business, gentlemen. Honest, she's my cousin from Rhode Island . I've worn both. Maybe someday but not New Jersey .” As a handsome bachelor he was once voted “The sexiest and most eligible man alive” in a popular magazine poll.

The ‘Curse of the Kennedys' seemed to have struck again. The eldest daughter, Rosemary was mentally retarded and underwent a failed lobotomy. Joe Senior and her mother then tucked her away in a mental home and never visited her. Joe Junior was killed in August 1944 when his bomber aircraft, loaded with explosives blew up over the English Channel . Four years later, in May 1948, his sister Kathleen (28) died in a plane crash in France . (Because Kathleen was planning to marry a Protestant divorcee her fanatically-devout mother refused to attend the funeral). Jack and Jacqueline's first child was stillborn in 1956. JFK lost his second son (3-days-old Patrick) in August 1963 after a premature birth. Then JFK himself was assassinated in Dallas and the whole incident sanitised by the Warren Commission's report. Ted Kennedy was badly injured in a light aircraft crash in June 1964. Robert died from an assassin's bullets in June 1968 just as he became the main hope of the Democratic Party. Edward Kennedy Junior lost his right leg to cancer and Teddy himself drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick in July 1969 and fled the scene, leaving his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, to drown in the sunken vehicle. Shortly after that Joseph Kennedy (Robert's son) was involved in a car accident that left a female passenger paralysed for life. David Kennedy (Robert's other son) died of a drug overdose at age 28, and Joseph Patrick Kennedy (Ted's boy) sought treatment for cocaine addiction in 1984. William Kennedy Smith was acquitted in a ‘date rape' trial in 1991. In December 1997 Michael Kennedy died in a skiing accident shortly after being accused of molesting his 14-year-old babysitter.

JFK Junior married in 1996 but by July 1999 the union was rumoured to be headed for the rocks. Extra-marital affairs have been rife among Kennedy males, and that is not supposition but a verified fact.

*THE KENNEDY DYNASTY started with Joe senior (1889-1969) who made his substantial fortune by racketeering during World War 1 and bootlegging during Prohibition. The intensely ambitious Joe became US ambassador to Britain in 1938 but soon angered many with his anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi views. The German air-blitz of London started in July 1940. Every night, tons of lethal bombs were dropped on densely populated sections of the city in an effort to break the will of the British people. Instead, in their fear and anger, Londoners drew closer and more united in a resolve to battle Hitler's forces to the bitter end. American author Joe McGinniss writes: “It was said in London that during the nightly air raids Joe Kennedy was likely to be hiding out in his ‘funk hole' with some Paris model for the absence of his wife (in the USA) had allowed full reflowering of his impulse towards promiscuity.

“After the first few nights, however, not even Paris models could keep his fear in check. He began to leave his London office in mid-afternoon to ensure that he'd be safe in the countryside each night, far away from the falling bombs. His cowardice became the talk of the city, angering Londoners and causing other Americans great embarrassment. ‘Jittery Joe' they called him, and, behind his back, ‘run, rabbit, run'.

“He tried to joke about it, saying, hey, he had nine kids; he couldn't take chances. But each morning as the smoke cleared and the fires subsided and more bodies were pulled from the wreckage of civilian buildings, Londoners had less and less interest in anything Ambassador Joe Kennedy had to say.

“By October, he had had enough. He was just plain scared and wanted out of England altogether. Informed by Washington that he was being relieved of his posting, Joe made a quick round of goodbyes, announcing that once he was home he'd make it clear to all Americans that ‘Roosevelt and the damn kikes are taking us into this war.' By then British newspapers were referring to him openly as ‘a coward, a defeatist and a crook' and also ‘malevolent and pigeon-livered.' The news of his departure for the USA was the biggest boost of the year for British morale.

“Returning to America in late October 1940, Joe brought a British air raid siren with him as a souvenir. For years afterwards at Hyannis Port , he would use it to summon the family to meals. Having made it his practice to flee London long before the first siren had been sounded during the blitz, this seemed a peculiar memento, but to Joe it was just one more way of having the last laugh.” (‘The Last Brother' by Joe McGinniss, Pocket Star Books, 1993)

*THE JUDGE glowered down at the defendant trembling in the witness box below him. “Have you anything to say before I pass sentence upon you?” He thundered. The doomed man reached into his breast pocket, took out his cellphone, snapped it open and yelled into it, “Beam me up, Scottie!”

TRAVEL TALES. (1) An anguished man ran panting up to airport staff at a departure gate waving his boarding pass. “Please help me!” he said, “I'm supposed to be on flight 116 to Miami !”

“I'm afraid that you are too late, sir”, replied an airline official. “Your plane is just taking off.”

The passenger dropped his flight bag and removed a plastic card from his wallet. “American Express?” he said.

“Thank you”, said the official. “That will do nicely sir.”

(2) An aide for a Bush cabinet member once asked a travel agent if he could rent a car in Dallas when he arrived there. The agent looked up the flight details on his computer and noticed that the passenger and his party had only a one hour layover in Dallas . When asked why he wanted to rent a car, the aide said “I heard that Dallas is a big airport, and we will need a car to drive between departure gates to save time.”

(3) The same agent received a request from a New Hampshire Congresswoman who asked for an aisle seat so that her hair wouldn't get messed up by being near a window.

(4) He also got a call from an Illinois Congresswoman. “She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8.20am and got into Chicago at 8.33am”, he recalls. “I tried to explain that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois , but she could not understand the concept of time zones. Finally, I told her that the aircraft flew very fast, and she bought that!”

(5) A Senator's aide called to inquire about a trip package to Hawaii . After going over all the cost information, she asked, “Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii ?”

(6) Another freshman Congressman called him to ask, “How do I know which plane to get on to fly to Washington ?”

The agent asked him what he meant, and he replied, “I was told that my flight number is 823, but I've looked and none of these darn planes have numbers on them.”

(7) A New York lawmaker called the agent and asked, “Do airlines put your physical description on bags so that they know whose baggage belongs to whom?”

The agent replied, “No. Why do you ask?”

She answered, “When I checked in, the clerk put a tag on my bag that stated ‘FAT'. I'm overweight and I thought that was very rude.”

The agent checked into her allegation, and found out that the city code for Fresno , CA is ‘FAT' and that the airline staff were just putting a destination tag on her luggage.

(8) A Congresswoman from New Mexico called to make reservations. “I want to go from Chicago to Rhino, New York.” she said.

The agent was at a loss. Finally, he said, “Are you sure that's the name of the town?”

“Yes, what flights do you have?” the lady replied.

After some searching, the agent came back with, “I'm sorry, ma'am. I've looked up every airport code in the country and I can't find a Rhino anywhere.”

The lady retorted, “Don't be silly! Everyone knows where Rhino is. Check your state map, please!”

The agent scoured a map of the state of New York and finally offered, “You don't mean Buffalo do you?”

“That's it!” beamed the Congresswoman. “I knew it was named after a big animal.” (My thanks to Doug East for these).

*DURING THE peak years of the Vietnam conflict (1965-1975), it was well known that the Soviet Union was supplying materials and aid to the North Vietnamese government which was in a civil war with the US-backed South. The Kremlin secretly admitted that Soviet pilots were training Vietnamese flyers in the air defence of Hanoi , but the rumour persisted that Russian pilots were also flying combat missions against the US Air Force and Navy. This rumour may have been started by a well-known prankster from Air America , the clandestine air wing of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which operated extensively in South East Asia during those years.

Christopher Robbins writes in his excellent book, ‘Air America ', “The AA pilot was an ex-Air Force captain who flew a Caribou and had a gift for imitating accents. Sitting in the bar of the President Hotel in Hong Kong one evening, he was joined by a couple of Phantom F-4 fighter jocks from Vietnam . They were talking loosely about things the AA pilot felt were classified, and the three men struck up a conversation.

“What are you doing here?” One American pilot asked.

“I'm here on a few days R&R, as you Americans say.” The reply came in thickly Russian accented English and the two Air Force pilots exchanged glances.

“Yeah? Who are you with?”

“The People's Forty-Third Fighter Squadron.”

“What do you fly?” asked one pilot uneasily.

“MIG-29.”

There was a moment's silence before the pilot asked the final question in a subdued tone. “Where are you stationed?”

“ Hanoi .”

The pilots nodded, then shook their heads. One nudged the other. They finished their drinks and left. And later, back in Vietnam , they told their colleagues, with their hands on their hearts, of the Russian fighter pilot they had met on R&R in Hong Kong .” (Air America ', Asia Books 2001).

*AS MANY of you know, the Race Director of the London Marathon is David Bedford, former holder of the world 10,000 metres record. He became a household name in Britain in 1972, when he urged readers of the ‘Sun' newspaper to tune in their TV sets and watch him win the Olympic 10km track title in Munich , West Germany . After a dazzling run in the heats, he flopped dramatically in the final, trailing in home 6 th as Finland 's Lasse Viren won the first of four gold medals spread over two successive Olympics.

The magnificently mustachioed Bedford , known affectionately as ‘Mr Pastry', has never been backward in coming forward. During several business trips to the Spanish holiday/fitness resort of Lanzarote the London Marathon team found out by dining in various places that if one of them said it was his birthday, they would often get a free cake. One night they were drinking in an Irish bar. One of Mr Pastry's toadying staffers, keen to win brownie points with his boss, told the resident DJ that David Bedford was in the bar, and it was also his birthday. The DJ called for silence over his microphone and told the mass of people through the din of merriment, “Ladies and gents! Guess who we have in tonight?! David Beckham – and it's his birthday!”

The staffer urgently shouted, “Not David Beckham! It's DAVID BEDFORD!”

“Okay, alright”, said the DJ, and called for silence again. “Ladeeze'ngentlemen! We don't have David Beckham in here tonight after all. It's David Bedford!”

There was a two beat pause, and then he asked his audience, “Who the heck is David Bedford?” This was greeted with loud laughter.

But Mister Pastry was not amused. The staffer was duly sacked.

davidcox@loxinfo.co.th

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