Laugh? Because I am! GYLES’ TOP TEN FUNNIEST JOKES
crackers so I bought boxes of them. I opened the Tom Smith crackers, the oldest cracker company in the world, with the children and I wrote down the lines in my joke book. After opening three boxes, I found they were all the same so I wrote a letter of complaint.
Tom Smith wrote back saying, ‘Well, if you think you can do better, please do’. That’s how I became a professional Christmas cracker riddle writer 40 years ago. I still see some of them doing the rounds.
Then Kellogg’s got in touch as they wanted me to promote Snap, Crackle and Pop as funny guys for Rice Krispies and they needed the jokes to bring them to life. If you collected a certain number of labels from the box, you could send off for a Gyles Brandreth joke book.
In the 1970s and 1980s, I was the leading producer of children’s jokes in the world: The Big Book of Jokes, The Little Book of Jokes, The Silly Book of Jokes, The Fat Book of Riddles, The Small Book of Riddles – I became a joke factory.
Jokes themselves have been around for several thousand years. We can date them back to ancient Mesopotamia, in 1900BC, but they really came into their own in the Victorian times, the age of the music hall when newspapers and magazines got going.
A lot of people say the knock-knock joke began with Shakespeare and certainly the phrase appears in his play Macbeth courtesy of the porter, one of its comic characters. In 1936, it was used in an advertisement by a company who made roofs. The joke went like this: “Knock, knock! Who’s there? Rufus. Rufus who? Rufus the most important part of your house.”
WHEN MY children grew up and began serious jobs – my eldest son Benet is a lawyer, my daughter Saethryd, a journalist, and my youngest Aphra, a politician – they were not interested in children’s jokes. I had all these silly books and toys in the basement but my father was dead and my wife wasn’t interested so I sat there like a sad jester.
But then happily grandchildren start coming along and I now have seven of them. I started telling my jokes to my grandchildren and they seemed to like them.
I got in touch with Penguin, the publisher of my last joke book 40 years ago and asked:
“What’s black and white, and read all over?” They groaned and said, “I don’t know. A newspaper?” I said, “No, no, no. That’s too predictable. It could be a number of things.A sunburnt zebra. An embarrassed penguin. How about a skunk with a nappy rash? My favourite is a chocolate and vanilla ice cream sundae with tomato ketchup poured over it.”
You see the possibilities are endless, hence so are the gags.
On that note, let me leave with adapted joke from my new book.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Hacienda. Hacienda who? Hacienda the article.
And it really is. you an
Did you hear about the race between the giraffe and the ostrich? It was neck and neck all the way. What did the farmer say when he found a root vegetable on the library shelf? “That’s a turnip for the books.” The person who invented the door knocker won the Nobel Prize Why didn’t the sun need to go to university? Because it already has a million degrees! Maths teacher: “If you got £20 from 5 people, what do you get?” Student: “A new bike.”
I own a pencil that used to be owned by William Shakespeare, but he chewed it a lot. Now I can’t tell if it’s 2B or not 2B.
Why are graveyards noisy? Because of all the coffin! Knock, knock. Who’s there? Nana. Nana who? Nana your business!