WITH a name like "Velabahleke", which implies that his birth brought mirth to his family, Velabahleke Njabulo Paul Vilakazi must fancy himself a comedian.

WITH a name like "Velabahleke", which implies that his birth brought mirth to his family, Velabahleke Njabulo Paul Vilakazi must fancy himself a comedian.

He credits "the spirit of hilarity that pervaded my family" for his book, Tender Eating-skollies and Other Puns.

It saddens me to say that this "spirit of hilarity" did not make it to his book. The few pages I managed to read did nothing but annoy me.

I had a hard time finishing the first story titled Uncle Van Reclaimed and Reconstructed, which starts off as a mockery of the South African surnames Van Niekerk and Koekemoer.

The story then goes on incoherently, touching on a Van der Merwe joke supposedly told to Queen Elizabeth, and also dropping names such as Robert Mugabe and Desmond Tutu.

I still don't know what this story was about and how all the people and events mentioned fit together after reading it a number of times.

The same goes for the rest of Vilakazi's puns. They are incoherent and not funny. The book reads like the ramblings of a man who laughs at his own jokes. It is littered with silly and obvious spelling and grammatical errors that should have never made it into print.