The best jokes are often inseparable from the person who originally delivered them, and even one-liners lose some of their appeal when dissociated from their original begetters: the likes of the great Bob Hope and Woody Allen.
The first joke I ever heard, or at least the first one I understood:
"Do you know the Battersea Dog's Home?"
"I never knew it had been away".
That still makes me laugh half a century and more later, not so much for the word play although it's not too bad, is it? as for the notion of a Battersea dog ("Look, there goes the Battersea Dog again"). Jokes involving animals, particularly cats and dogs, seem to strike a deep chord in the British psyche.
Another one from roughly the same period:
"I'm going to have to have my dog put down."
"Why? Is he mad?"
No, but he will be when he finds out."
More recently, that lovely cartoon showing two dogs staring soulfully at a computer screen. The caption reads:
"Nobody know you're a dog on the Web".
Another cartoon, in the middle of the African jungle:
"White man comes in big silver bird and makes lines on my TV set."
No comments:
Post a Comment