A rough coated, dough faced, thoughtful poughman, strode through the streets of Scarborough. After falling into a Slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
At the army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
A buck does funny things when does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.
Nobody says 'Scarboroe', at least not to refer to the Yorkshire town. Not even Simon and Garfunkel got it quite that wrong! Anyone who pronounced it like that in England would get some very strange looks indeed. As Paul says, it's pronounced /ska:brə/.
S and G pronounce all three syllables /ska:bʌrə/ but we'll forgive them,
(a) because the ballad 'Scarborough Fair' goes back to at least the 18th century, when the word probably was said like that,
(b) it fits better with the music,
(c) they made a very nice job of it. Thank you, boys.
And just to complicate matters further, 'borough' meaning 'district' is pronounced differently in GB and US English. In British English, it's /bʌrə/, with the same vowel sounds as 'mother' or 'other'. In American English, 'borough' is pronounced to rhyme with 'furrow' - or like the burrows that bunny rabbits live in - hence Dave's wholly reasonable assumption that Scarborough was pronounced 'Scarboroe'.
There is no rhyme or reason to the pronunciation of place names in the UK. Worcester, anyone? Or Leicester? You just have to find out from locals and copy them. Even British people make idiots of themselves sometimes by mispronouncing place names.
That's probably why they set it in Slough ha. You know the thing in the UK, where everybody tribally dislikes the next town along. Perfect opportunity for someone from Reading to put another nail in the coffin of Slough.
I believe that Slough boasts a particularly attractive traffic roundabout, too.
Haha, yes, I remember that poem is in the series. David Brent reads the poem in one of the episodes, and then interjects with 'You don't solve town planning problems by dropping bombs all over the place'. :)
Ricky Gervais is from Reading, he will have been fully aware of Slough's shall we say, dubious reputation.
It's the late poet laureate John Betjeman who was responsible for Slough's reputation as a dismal place.
In 1937, he wrote:
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
It never quite recovered from this libel.
