He got the Rons wrong
I WAS sitting in my kitchen, sipping coffee while listening to Tom Jones singing The Green, Green Grass of Home and when the song finished I said to Tom…
“Your voice sounds better than ever, mate. Now drink your coffee before it gets cold!” See what I did there?
You automatically assumed Tom was on the radio or a CD, then I pulled the rug from under you by revealing that Tom was actually in my kitchen.
It’s a standard joke format, the comedian’s equivalent of the stage magician’s misdirection.
My one attempt at mixing comedy with magic failed dismally.
Producing a bunch of limp daffodils out of thin air instead of delivering a killer punchline didn’t go down too well.
Although I’m no learned expert in humour, I know a bit about comedy and comedians.
If I hear a joke, I usually know which comedian originated it.
Which makes me slightly more knowledgeable than the journalist who recently mentioned The Two Ronnies in an article.
He was making a point about the over-use of swearing by modern TV comedians, contrasting them with the true greats of British comedy, like Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, who never resorted to swearing to get laughs.
The Ronnies set a high bar in humour, personally selecting the ‘news items’ used at the beginning and end of each show out of the hundreds they were offered.
If either Ronnie was doubtful about a gag, it wasn’t used.
While it was an interesting article, the examples of ‘Classic Two Ronnies jokes’ given were
apparently no such thing!
A comedy writer friend of mine, who penned jokes for The Two Ronnies, suspects the half-dozen ‘Classic Two Ronnies jokes’ may have been a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to capture the ‘Ronnies’ style.
Comedy can be so hard to get right!
Annoying discrepancies like this often appear in articles written about Tommy Cooper.
Any list of typically hilarious ‘Cooperisms’ usually include a smattering of Tim Vine gags!
Having cleared that up, the only way to finish is to say . . . “It’s goodnight – from me!”