😈 THE GREATEST POEM ABOUT TIMBUKTU — WRITTEN BY A PASTOR (WHO DEFEATED A GREAT POET WITH IT)
1980s, Australian television, the final of an intellectual quiz show.
The scores are perfectly tied. To determine the winner, the host gives both contestants one final challenge: write a poem in 3 minutes that must end with the word "Timbuktu."
Timbuktu — a legendary ancient city in Mali, West Africa, the ultimate symbol of "an impossibly faraway place."
📚 Libraries housing hundreds of thousands of manuscripts
💰 The "City of Gold" that caravans crossed the Sahara to reach
🗺️ So remote and mythical that it became synonymous with "the middle of nowhere," "the back of beyond"
The English expression:
"From here to Timbuktu" = somewhere unimaginably far away
First to take the stage is the refined poet Alfred — an aristocrat of letters, a connoisseur of classical literature, a master of elegant prose.
With dignity and beautiful diction, he recites:
I was a father all my life,
I had no children, had no wife,
I read the bible through and through
on my way to Timbuktu...
The audience is in awe. Beautiful. Elevated. Almost biblical.
The poet already savours the taste of his victory.
Then Bruce, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, walks onto the stage.
He calmly looks out at the audience and delivers:
When Tim and I a-huntin' went,
We met three ladies in a tent.
They was three, and we was two,
So I booked one, and Timbuktu.
⏸️ THREE SECONDS OF DEAD SILENCE…
Someone in the audience giggled.
Someone started counting on their fingers: "3 ladies… 2 men… one took one… and Tim…"
Someone said it out loud: "Tim… booked… two… OH MY GOD!"
And then it hit everyone.
The room EXPLODES with laughter! 😂
Victory goes to the Adventist. Not for the beauty of his verse, but for a stroke of linguistic genius.
💡 WHAT'S THE TRICK?
"TIMBUKTU" sounds EXACTLY like "TIM BUCKED TWO"!
🔊 Listen: Tim-bucked-two = Tim-buk-tu
"Bucked" — a crude slang word meaning… well, you get the idea 😏
💀 THIS ISN'T JUST A DIRTY JOKE — IT'S A LINGUISTIC MASTERPIECE!
And suddenly everyone realises: the pastor won.
The Adventist pastor didn't just win a competition. He went down in history as the author of one of the most brilliantly clever poems ever written about Timbuktu.
P.S.: The real Timbuktu in Mali (population 54,000) still has no idea what kind of "fame" its name has brought to English poetry 😂