Charlie Chaplin broke into show business at the age of five because his mother, a music-hall performer, lost her voice during the performance and had to leave the stage; Charlie went on and sang a well-known song. Halfway through the song a shower of money poured onto the stage. Charlie stopped singing and told the audience he would pick up the money first and then finish the song. The audience laughed. This was the first of millions of laughs in Charlie Chaplin’s fabulous career.

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When the notoriously absentminded G. K. Chesterton became engaged, such was his desire to share the happy news with his mother that he went directly home and wrote her a long letter. While Mrs Chesterton was delighted with her son’s missive, its delivery hardly came as a surprise: she had been in the room with him when he wrote it.

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One night a group of Mark Twain’s friends in New York, having recognized the date as that of his birth, decided to send him a suitable greeting. Unfortunately, the globe-trotting traveller was away and no one knew where he might be reached. After some deliberation, a letter was simply sent off with the address: “Mark Twain, God Knows Where.” Several weeks later a letter arrived from Twain: “He did.”