Noble prize

Literary sideswipes reach three figures with the help of Walter Redfern from the French department at Reading University, who spotted Salvador Dali in characteristically bizarrely scatalogical mode in his Diary of a Genius (1966): "Don's farts are precious, not for their strength but for the nobility of their origin.

They are also quite rare, because dons in the academy cannot interrupt their study to launch them, and have to feminise them before letting them abroad. When alone, they can be franker, for dons today eat more beans than fat chickens."