Extremely Silly Ipsum

Placeholder text of no practical use whatsoever. You're welcome.

Stop that — it's silly. Or rather, don't: the Extremely Silly Ipsum generator produces placeholder text assembled from the finest traditions of British absurdist comedy, from wartime radio nonsense to dead parrots and beyond. It is, we're proud to say, of no practical use whatsoever. Except as placeholder text, at which it excels.

A short history of British silliness

Britain has been industriously silly for a very long time. The lineage runs from Victorian nonsense verse — Edward Lear's owl and pussycat, Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' — through The Goon Show on 1950s BBC radio, where Spike Milligan detonated the English language weekly and 'ying tong iddle i po' passed for a chorus. The Goons begat Monty Python, Python begat more or less everyone since, and the nation's comedy has never once apologised for any of it.

What unites the whole tradition is total commitment to the absurd, delivered with a completely straight face: a government ministry dedicated to Silly Walks, a parrot that is definitely only resting, a wafer-thin mint with catastrophic consequences. It's the same instinct you'll find in our timid apologies and estate-agent euphemisms — language taken somewhere it has no business going, and thriving there.

Spot the reference

The generator's phrase book is a scrapbook of national in-jokes, and half the fun is recognising where each one escaped from. A few of the sources you might spot in the output:

Where it's all from

PhraseSource
ying tong iddle i poThe Goon Show
he's fallen in the waterThe Goon Show
what have the Romans ever done for usMonty Python's Life of Brian
just a wafer-thin mintMonty Python's The Meaning of Life
stop that, it's sillyMonty Python's Flying Circus
don't panicDad's Army
ooh BettySome Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
ooh matronthe Carry On films
computer says noLittle Britain
suits you, sir / scorchioThe Fast Show
good moaning'Allo 'Allo!
he's behind youevery pantomime since time began

When to use Extremely Silly placeholder text

Extremely silly ipsum is for projects that could use a grin: party invitations, comedy sites, game jams, portfolio pieces, or any mock-up destined to be screenshotted at 11pm. It also doubles as a sneaky usability test — if nobody in the review meeting laughs, nobody actually read your prototype, and that's worth knowing.

Generate away. And remember: whatever the output says, do not panic.