Walking cliches.

[Icehaven]

There's a very elderly Eastern European gentleman with a strong accent and a very long name beginning with 'Cz...' who frequently visits my work and is obsessed with chess. The only books he borrows are chess books, he used to remove the chess puzzle from the Independent every day until we started taking the page out and putting it to one side before he took it, and I've overheard him starting chess-based conversations with the other old men sitting around. He also always wears a woolly hat. There's one of him in about a million (mostly quite cheesy) films and books. But cliches become so for a reason I suppose, so any others? 

[Unoriginal]

Chinese students taking pictures in front of nondescript buildings with absurdly big cameras. I saw a girl take a picture of her friend in front of Spar a few weeks ago, and I saw another having a picture taken outside somebody's house, which just looked like most other houses.

Middle class students doing business studies and ingesting any drug that comes their way. They go to lectures so little that you begin to wonder whether they're actually in the university.

Working class 'lads' whose conversation consists of misogyny and shouting or chanting. Never anything else. They also invariably drink alcopops and are unnaturally tanned.

90% of people sitting in any rugby club in Wales on the weekend.

90% of males who do weights in any gym in the country.

Southern English students making awful, tired jokes about Welsh people and expressing amazement that there are Welsh people with Welsh accents in Wales.

The South generally.

[dr beat]

Jimmy Savile? (when he was alive?)

[dr beat]

There's a very elderly Eastern European gentleman with a strong accent and a very long name beginning with 'Cz...' who frequently visits my work and is obsessed with chess.

Does he sidle up to people and knowingly say things like 'ze bear sleeps tonight, but the eagle is safe in his nest'...?

[Vodka Margarine]

I've never seen a Scot eat salad. Half my family are Scottish and I've been around the country enough for this not to be total small-minded racist conjecture. Someone somewhere in Scotland must eat salad because I've seen it for sale in supermarkets and everything. I've just never seen it happen.

[Icehaven]

Does he sidle up to people and knowingly say things like 'ze bear sleeps tonight, but the eagle is safe in his nest'...?

No, I think it's the opposite, sadly. I didn't put this in the original post as it seemed a bit... But I think he's Polish, and the very few non-chess books he's borrowed are about WW2. It's both surprising and unsurprising how many older people who are clearly veterans/survivors of WW2 only want books about WW2. 

[Sasha]

Chinese students taking pictures in front of nondescript buildings with absurdly big cameras. I saw a girl take a picture of her friend in front of Spar a few weeks ago, and I saw another having a picture taken outside somebody's house, which just looked like most other houses.

Middle class students doing business studies and ingesting any drug that comes their way. They go to lectures so little that you begin to wonder whether they're actually in the university.

Working class 'lads' whose conversation consists of misogyny and shouting or chanting. Never anything else. They also invariably drink alcopops and are unnaturally tanned.

90% of people sitting in any rugby club in Wales on the weekend.

90% of males who do weights in any gym in the country.

Southern English students making awful, tired jokes about Welsh people and expressing amazement that there are Welsh people with Welsh accents in Wales. The South generally.

Seriously?

what part of south wales are you in?
what uni are you in?

[Sasha]

Dumb blondes with big tits acting like bimbos

[dr beat]

Biggytitbo acting like a dumb blonde

[Big Jack McBastard]

Dumb blondes with big tits acting like bimbos

Smartarse brunettes with ironing board chests crumpling up their faces when the above occurs.

[Sasha]

Smartarse brunettes with ironing board chests crumpling up their faces when the above occurs.

agreed.

I'm so glad I am a blonde non bimbo with a decent pair titties.

[Blinder Data]

In an Edinburgh Tesco, I saw an old man in a kilt, jacket and Tam O'Shanter wandering the aisles with the aid of a walking stick. He was muttering incoherently about Irn Bru.

Living in France means I come into regular contact with what I would call Walking French Clichés, but then maybe as a typical English xenophobe I'm just more likely to jump to stereotypical conclusions. However, the middle-aged bus driver blessed with long, flowing black hair, who wore a suit jacket, shirt and a flipping cravat will take some beating.

PREFERABLY FROM MY SKINHEAD ALBION FISTS

[Big Jack McBastard]

I'm so glad I am a blonde non bimbo with a decent pair titties.

Congratulations, though claims like that are more easily believed if you post some tastefully shot pictures of yourself in the scud.

[daffs]

No, I think it's the opposite, sadly. I didn't put this in the original post as it seemed a bit... But I think he's Polish, and the very few non-chess books he's borrowed are about WW2. It's both surprising and unsurprising how many older people who are clearly veterans/survivors of WW2 only want books about WW2.

I find that sort of sweet though, and unsurprising when you think about it. If something as traumatic as a bloody world war happened to ME I'd wanna know a bit more about it

[Big Jack McBastard]

They probably get them to point out all the inaccuracies and revisionist bits of history they can find with their old man-mates. Plus, you never know, they *might* be in the background in one of the pictures and thus (not really) famous, or perhaps they're just mad enough now to imagine that that's the case.

[Sasha]

Congratulations, though claims like that are more easily believed if you post some tastefully shot pictures of yourself in the scud.

my avatar, when I get round to making one is going to be of my cleavage : )

[Big Jack McBastard]

That's an acceptable start.

[Serge]

I might have mentioned this one on here before, but years ago when I was working on Charing Cross Road, a guy came into the shop looking for a book that had recently been published of jazz album covers drawn by a certain artist (I forget who exactly.) This guy was a walking jazz fan cliche, right down to the beret, the goatee, the loose kaftan-esque top and beads. Not to mention ending every sentence with 'man'. I walked over with him to the section I knew the book was in, and when I presented it to him, he exclaimed, "Lordy, child!", which to this day, is my favourite working moment ever.

[Blue Jam]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHaZyMxgxpk

[Absorb the anus burn]

These like totally wealthy American girls, aged about 15 to 21 who are like studying in London for a year. They travel around with their dumb friends and like talk drivel on the subway as they play with their hair and use the word like it's going out of fashion.

[babyshambler]

I barely ever see gentlemen of an oriental persuasion whilst walking around Harrogate until I pass a William Hill shop.

They fucking love a punt, don't they!

[gabrielconroy]

Is the chess guy this same gentleman?

http://youtu.be/J1-sYUO_cMQ?t=3m55s

Most chess aficionados have a certain manic sadness about them, probably coming from the confusion bound up in being so excited about something so ultimately pointless. There is a definite chess cliché about the genius driven mad by the complexities of the game, but I can only think of a couple of players who went mad so I think that one doesn't have much basis in reality.

[billyandthecloneasaurus]

At a social gathering organised by the Polish girls in my halls in first year, I heard some lad scream 'SMIIIIIRNOFF! VODKA!' at about 2am.

My Polish grandfather was the archetypal mad eastern European bloke; once I heard him saying 'Vera! It is the Jews!' at my grandmother, and once there was a power cut as my dad came to pick me up, and as my nan (mum's mum) and my dad (separated from my mum) made awkward small-talk about the power-cut, my granddad wandered over with a smug look on his face, holding a burning rolled up newspaper, glanced at it still smirking, glanced to us, glanced back to the paper, the grin was replaced with a look of horror and he screamed 'VERA!  FIRE!'

[Clatty McCutcheon]

I had at least one university lecturer who fitted the stereotype of the wild-haired, absent-minded, eccentric bumbling professor.  The one I'm particularly thinking of would (if he remembered to turn up at all) wander into hour long lectures half an hour late and deliver twenty minutes of wildly tangential, off-topic monologue before disappearing back to his office.  He generally wore an old jacket which must have resided mostly on the floor of his office as it was usually decorated with a footprint or two in the middle of its back. 

He probably cultivated the image of the eccentric to some extent but he had such an air of inscrutability and detachment that at times you had to wonder whether he actually knew precisely who he was, who we (the students) were, and what he was supposed to be imparting to us.  Also, sometimes he would pass you in the street with a cheery greeting and other times he would completely blank someone who spoke directly to him and begin talking about something else entirely.

Basically, he wasn't a million miles away from being a latter day Professor Welch from 'Lucky Jim'.

[Lazy Daisy]

my avatar, when I get round to making one is going to be of my cleavage : )

Once again you come second.

[glitch]

agreed.

I'm so glad I am a blonde non bimbo with a decent pair titties.

You sure? Your posts in that delightfully ignorant thread of yours seem to be pretty fucking stupid, you dumb fuck.

[doppelkorn]

The first time I ever went to Scotland was on a student union organised coach trip to Edinburgh which consisted of me and my English girlfriend and about 50 foreign students.

The second we got off the coach a drunk man clutching a can of Tennent's Super stumbled up to us screaming about "ya fuckin' english bassas an ya fuck off ye fucking englesh CUNTS!" before wobbling away from us. His trousers then fell down round his knees and he keeled over. This was about 5pm.

[monkfromhavana]

The first time I ever went to Scotland was on a student union organised coach trip to Edinburgh which consisted of me and my English girlfriend and about 50 foreign students.

The second we got off the coach a drunk man clutching a can of Tennent's Super stumbled up to us screaming about "ya fuckin' english bassas an ya fuck off ye fucking englesh CUNTS!" before wobbling away from us. His trousers then fell down round his knees and he keeled over. This was about 5pm.

Was nice of them to send the First Minister to meet you off the coach.

[Buelligan]

My lovely Grandfather.  Huge moustache, silk bowties, ancient tweeds, gold half-moon specs, tasselled smoking cap, constant classical music played on a homemade system with giant speakers wired all over the house, bottle of scotch and eighty fags a day, read greek and latin from books he'd bound himself, smelt strongly of whisky, tobacco and shaving soap, wore a cape, liked producing illuminated manuscripts on vellum, tied his own trout flies, shouted at the telly/newspaper/anything that had the faintest leaning towards the twentieth century, had a very soft heart, was an enormous, delightful, clever old walrus.

[mook]

was the great war as frightful as they say Buelligan?