Gleaming royal humour lives on in a thousand little stories

Real-life stories of the late monarch’s wit raise smiles, but, intriguingly, they also tell us a lot about his talent, his thinking, his way of life and, last but not least, why Thai people hold him so close to their hearts.
I couldn’t find official translations for the examples gathered below, so I did my best to render the Thai versions accurately. Any mistakes are mine.
His Majesty asked his attending doctors to stick to their prescribed duties and do no more. Whatever nurses could do, he made it a point that they, not the doctors, did it. One day, somebody asked him why.
“[Bringing me pills and giving injections] are nurses’ duties,” HM said.
“Why do you trust the nurses so much?” the person continued.
“Because a nurse brought me up,” HM replied.
(Columnist’s note: HRH the late Princess Mother was a nurse.)
When His Majesty visited America in 1960 with Her Majesty the Queen, the royal couple granted an interview to local media. “Why do you look so solemn?” a young American reporter asked him. “Why haven’t you smiled?”
The monarch turned to his Queen and said: “There. That’s my smile.”
His Majesty befriended the American entertainer Bob Hope when the latter visited Southeast Asia to offer moral support to US troops in Vietnam. When Hope learned he had been granted an audience, he asked if he could bring some friends to the Palace. The monarch said yes.
As it turned out, Hope brought a large group of big-band musicians, who entertained the King late into the night.
When they said goodbye, Hope asked His Majesty to drop by his residence when he visited America. 
“I will,” came the reply, “along 
with my 63 friends.”
His Majesty once remarked to an American magazine interviewer that a visiting US president is always surrounded by secret service officials.
“If it were me I wouldn’t be able to get up close and personal with the people,” the monarch said.
“If there are too many people in my way, a grandmother will say ‘Please give the King some room.’ That grandmother, you see, is my FBI.”
At a 1995 Board of Investment Fair, Their Majesties visited several booths before a much-talked-about incident took place inside Sony’s exhibit. There, a state-of-the-art light show gave visitors the illusion they were deep under the ocean, with fish swimming by at arm’s length.
A sign read: Anyone who can capture the fish will be rewarded with a television.
Knowing the fish were a trick of the light, everyone shrugged at the sign. Well, almost everyone.
“I’ve got it,” His Majesty finally said, raising his camera. “The fish are in here.”
Sony was happy to hand over the TV set.
His Majesty was in the habit of driving himself to remote communities when he stayed in Hua Hin. Unannounced, unexpected or unpublicised visits led to several stories. Here’s one of them:
One day in 1995, he drove to a village where people were busy decorating streets for a royal visit scheduled the next day. Villagers working on an archway that his official convoy was to pass under refused to allow his car to pass.
Failing to recognise the car driver, one of them told him, “The King must pass this first before you can.” The monarch concurred.
His Majesty returned with his entourage the following day, of course. When he met the King-must-pass-first man, the monarch said: “At the moment I am the King, so I guess it’s all right for me to pass under the arch today.”
A similar story involved a guard manning the Hua Hin Palace entrance, who demanded to see the security pass of a lone traveller who arrived at the gate.
“Without a card you can’t pass, sir,” the guard insisted.
“I don’t have any card on me, but do you have a banknote?” the mysterious man asked.
“Yes sir. Why?”
“Because that’s my pass.”
In 1970, His Majesty visited a remote village in Chiang Mai. He settled down in a ramshackle hut, where the village headman offered him homemade liquor in a glass that didn’t look the cleanest. An aide whispered to the monarch that he could just pretend to sip and then pass the glass to him to finish it.
The King ignored the advice and promptly downed the firewater in one. He later told his aides: “Don’t worry about germs. I think the alcohol level was intense enough to kill all of them.”
In 1970, His Majesty wanted to visit an insurgency-plagued area in Phatthalung. The Interior Ministry advised him that he should wait “until the situation improves”.
Here was the reply: “Villagers there live day in and day out with risks that are way higher than ours. Are we supposed to be afraid to go there and see how they live?”