Hitchens' Limericks from Australia

Several choice limericks from Julian Morrow's interview with Christopher Hitchens at the Sydney Writers' Festival

May 22, 2010, Sydney Town Hall, Sydney, Australia

MORROW: I would like you to give us one and your dirtiest limerick to conclude, if possible.

HITCHENS: They tend to be clerical, the really dirty ones.

There was a young fellow of kings
Whose mind was upon higher things.
But his real desire
Was a boy in the choir
With an ass like a jelly on springs.

That's not very dirty, though, but it gives you an idea. It's a curtain raiser for the anti-clerical.

The bishop of central Japan
Used to roger himself with a fan.
And when taxed with these acts,
He replied, "It contracts,
And expands, rather more than a man!"

But see, you can do it with almost no dirty words. That's the key thing, I think, is to keep it filthy but not smutty.

A vice both obscene and unsavory
Holds the bishop of barking and slavery.
With lascivious howls
He deflowers young owls
That he lures to an underground aviary.

MORROW: Well...

HITCHENS: And, well ok, you want one dirty one then. Because these are suggestive, shall we say, but not...

It is said of the bishop of Birmingham
That he fucks little boys while confirming 'em.
They kneel on their hassock,
He lifts up his cassock
And pumps his Episcopal sperm in 'em.