This is the hilariously chaotic story of a sojourn taken on the Thames from London to Oxford by the writer, Jerome K. Jerome, with his weary inept friends Goerge, Harris, and the dog Montmorency.
The novel - [click for full text here] - is a series of often very funny vignettes that recount the many scrapes the men get involved in. Rather than the situations, it is Jerome's prose that is the real attraction here. He finds humour in the most banal of objects from a tin of pineapple chunks that is impossible to open, to the description of his friend's day's work: 'Goeorge goes to sleep in a bank from ten till four each day except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two.'
The book is a wonderful read. The movie, starring Tim Curry, Michael Palin, and Stephen Moore, is a real treat but hard to get. Here's the full albeit rather washed-out sequence from Youtube:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Well, Nick, there are two of us already, and we also have the dog! All we need now is the third man and we can be off down the Clyde River in "Amber Lady". Just don't forget the opener for the tin of pineapple!
