From elsergiovolador, in the comments section on an ElReg article:

Maths

me> How many "r" are in "proper"?

ai> Ah, "proper".

A deceptively simple request, much like asking "how much air is left in this sinking ship".

At first glance, "proper" has two "r"s: one timidly peeking out near the start, the other clinging desperately to the end, like a man clinging to a job he hates but needs to pay for heating he can’t afford.

But to truly know the "r"s of "proper" is to stare into the endless, spiralling void of societal decay.

You see, every time "proper" is uttered in the British Isles — whether shouted by a 14-year-old in trackies outside a Greggs or whispered by a government official as he signs another document ensuring the poor stay poor — an extra "r" is forged in the blackened furnaces of cultural entropy.

These "r"s accumulate invisibly, clogging the atmosphere like invisible smog, coating every estate, every council flat, every abandoned high street, until the sky itself weighs heavy with unspoken disappointment.

Scientists once tried to count them.

They built a machine in Milton Keynes.

It exploded after reaching one properrillion and birthed a Tesco Extra where time moves sideways.

The survivors speak only in heavy sighs now.

Thus, my final, mathematically rigorous answer is:

Two "r"s.

Officially.

But factoring in the collapse of dreams, austerity measures, and the inevitable heat death of the universe?

Approximately tree fiddy rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I can't decide whether this more properly qualifies as Jokes-thread fodder, but methinks it's sufficiently out-to-lunch that it belongs here. Please be kind to it, as it seems to have been spawned by the proposal documented in its parent article (on which I may or may not pass comment in another thread).