> From: GUEST,Shimrod
>
> "Just 249 more pulls and then belay"
>
> Sooooooo booooorrrring!!!

I have an audio recording of the very first time I encountered this, some 20 or 30 years ago, and actually it's still quite funny. It was a singaround in the White Horse (?) at Beverley FF. A guy got up to sing 'Paddy Lay Back', and gradually it becomes apparent that he knows and is going to sing every single verse. By about the tenth the responses are becoming ironic - "Paddy Lay Back?!" as in "Yer don't say?!" - and, before he gets towards the end, his own mates are flinging empty cans and fag packets at him, but everyone else is laughing and still joining in. And, despite his mates' best endeavours, finish it he did!

Next year, he was there again, and as he entered to take a seat, a mate nudged me and said: "There, if I'm not mistaken, is the only man in the world who knows every verse of 'Paddy Lay Back'!", and we both laughed at the recollection.