Jolly Good Pals

Also known as the Bloody Fools, these are the in-house enforcers of the Fools' Guild and are clowns to be more than usually avoided. Their contract requires them to police Fooldom for tellers of unauthorised and unregistered jokes, lack of prescribed honking, and unregulated Foolery of all kinds.

As they were often a long way from home, they had to be men of character and resource, capable of delivering swift and memorable retribution such as the Cement Down The Trousers gag, the "Custard" Pie in the Face slapstick, and, of course, the Seesaw of Jolly Japes, which no clown survives a second time. It follows on, therefore, that the Pals would all be adepts of the battleclowning martial arts discipline of sloshi.

The job description today might add patrolling the Guild buildings and places of entertainment in order to deal with transgressions in a manner that Ankh-Morpork bystanders might class as amusing and diverting street theatre. (ie, painful and humiliating to the Clown on the receiving end). A secondary reason might be to assert the will of Dr Whiteface as leader of the Guild, and to seek out and deal with any dissent against his continuing governance of the Council of Fun. And, of course, to conclusively argue against anyone expressing any idea that Dr Whiteface is a cruel and devious international manipulator who has ensured the great wealth of the Guild comes from its graduates acting as a vast spy network filtering useful information back to the House of Mirth. As the Pals will point out to such ill-informed and badly led people, the good Doctor is merely a hard-working administrator with good financial discipline. That's all, friend.

The hereditary Face who leads the Pals is Captain Billy "Clapstick Jack" Nodger. Other named Pals include Brother Jolly the executioner.

Approved punishments include:

• The Pouring of Cement Down The trousers;
• The See-Saw of Jolly Japes;
• The Twanging of the Braces.