WORDS, words, words.

Wonderful things, aren’t they?

They can paint pictures, produce musical effects, break hearts. They can even start and end wars.

Or make you laugh. A lot.

One wordsmith who made readers laugh a lot was Sir Terry Pratchett. I was incredibly saddened to see he’d died.

His millions of words – well, the ones he chose to carefully arrange in evermore-enchanting sequences – created a complete comic universe, whisking fans away on a disc balanced on the backs of elephants standing a-top a giant turtle. (If this means nothing to you, then you really should read a Discworld novel.) Pratchett learned his trade as a writer first as a reporter and then a sub-editor on local newspapers in the west country. The first paper he worked for was the Bucks Free Press, one of our sister newspapers.

His love of words and wordplay was clear in everything he wrote.

I too love clever usage of words or unintended humorous results of words misused or misspelled. Puns in particular are a favourite (Pratchett was a master punner in Discworld).

You’ve no doubt heard of the camping shop that put a sign outside saying ‘Now is the season of our discount tents’.

Punning shop names, too, are a particular source of pleasure.

There are plenty of barber shops out there called Fringe Benefits or Beyond the Fringe. So it takes a particularly good one to stand out from the crowd.

Here are a few that tickled me.

Julius Cedar (a lumberyard). Alexander the Grate (a Belfast fireplace retailer). C’Est Cheese (a gourmet food and cheese shop in California). Boo’s (an off-licence... this really only works, of course, if the retailer is actually called Boo). Carl’s Pane in the Glass, a glazier from Texas.

But how about this for an upbeat and positive business? Oui Oui Enterprises. What do you think is their trade?

You got it... it’s a mobile toilet hire company.

All memorable and liable to cause customers to titter briefly.

I tittered for quite a while recently when I visited a charity shop. On the counter was a note to customers, scrawled scruffily in black marker pen, to the effect that the shop could not accept ‘labiality’ for the safety of donated items.

I’ll offer no further comment but instead move swiftly to another incident that tickled me.

I was in a bookshop with my seven-year-old son, gazing at the classics section. As I scanned the spines, my son piped up, ‘Dad, who’s this dumb-ass author?’ I looked down at him, shocked by his sudden outburst. I wondered where on earth he’d picked up this mild American insult.

And then I saw the book he was referring to.

It was The Three Musketeers.

By Alexandre Dumas.