Send In The Clowns

I see that old time comedian Frank Carson is recovering from a cancer operation, God bless him.

I don’t know how old you have to be before people add “God bless him” after your name but, whatever it is, Carson seems to have passed that about two hundred years ago. Yet the old codger still does over two hundred gigs a year so good on him.

You’ve got to admire his enduring love for the sounds of laughter, or, to be more realistic, the sound of sweeties being sucked, dentures being put back in, and woollen gloves softly meeting in arthritic applause .

Anyway, last week he wrote an article for a national newspaper and the message was that all modern comedians have simply stolen his stuff and are rubbish - or at least not as good as he is - and he also got in a mention that he does lots of charity work. I found it a bit sad that he spent hundreds of words in self praise and that he couldn’t be more gracious. He even found time to slag off the winning joke from the Edinburgh Festival this year by saying that he had to have it explained to him and even then it just wasn’t funny. Actually Frank, it was clever AND funny.

The winning punchline came from comedian Nick Hemp who said “My computer asked for a password with eight characters, so I chose Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Now come on, that’s a good joke isn’t it? The runner up was also great. It came from last year’s winner Tim Vine who said “Crime in multi storey car parks. Wrong on so many levels.” Frank˒ God bless him˒ didn’t like Tim’s winner last year “I went on a once in a lifetime holiday. Never again,” saying it was stolen from a joke he told years ago about an Irishman losing his teeth.

My advice Frank is to relax. You have nothing to prove. Let this generation get on with it. Being so critical makes you look like a deformed lemon - bitter and twisted. He wouldn't like that gag either.

Despite Frank it’s been a great week for jokes though. My favourite came on an email I received. I think I’ve mentioned before here that I am colour blind, so with that in mind, you might see why I loved this one so much. The joke goes “I’ve just discovered I’m colour blind. It hit me like a bolt out of the green.” You can’t beat a bit of self mockery.

Another good one I heard this week was also on the short list from Edinburgh. Comedian Alan Sharp came up with “I used to be in a band. We called ourselves The Prevention, because we wanted people to say we were better than The Cure”. And I also liked DeAnne Jones’ gag, “my friend died doing what he loves. Heroin.”

Some funnies have to be said in a certain accent. A Glaswegian guy takes home his new rather tall girlfriend. “This is Amanda” he says to his dad who replies “It’s a WHAT?”.

Of course I realise that humour is a personal thing and you may read these gags and not even smile. So let me finish by telling you of something that everyone in the world should find hilarious, as well as totally absurd. And it’s all true!

A guy sent me a request this week asking if he could be my “friend” on Facebook. No problem there except his profile photo, for the whole world to see, was not the traditional passport photo but an image of the outlawed terrorist organisation The Ulster Volunteer Force.

I laughed for ages at the absurdity of this man before, of course, refusing his request and then feeling sorry for him. I’m sure he would be offended at me laughing, and I’m not sure he realises how silly he looks, but surely even Frank would have laughed. God bless him.