h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

During my attempts to research something of the history of the merkin, I found that some mad fools across the pond are actually attempting to catch fish with them!!

The 'Merkin' (invented by Del Brown)seems to be particularly good at catching Permits (some bizarre kind of fish), whereas I believe the original merkins were invented for those who had been particularly good at catching syphyllis.

Have a look at http://pages.prodigy.net/fishvet/merkin.html to see Del Brown's Merkin Yarn Crab

Unfortunately, I have still not found any sites where you can view the original.

One of Tom Sharpe's books had a hero who escaped from his wife only to get a job in a merkin factory. I had to look up the meaning before I could pick up on the jokes. By the way in Kuwait, where I was living in the 1980s, the censors used to scrawl black marks over the bawdy covers of his books but the insides escaped the blue pencil