PLAYING THE JOKER

Author, broadcaster and fan of toe-curling punchlines,

He is often regarded as the quintessential Englishman but Gyles Brandreth has revealed his funnybone was forged in Scotland.

The actor, writer, TV presenter and former politician has been collecting – and writing – jokes all his life, and now, in these difficult times, he has gathered them together in a collection he describes as both the best and worst joke book in the world.

From his love of DC Thomson comics like The Dandy and Topper in his childhood, to idolising Scots comedy greats Duncan Macrae and Stanley Baxter, to having his life changed at the Edinburgh

Fringe, Gyles, 72, says he has always looked north for laughs. “My mother’s family was from Glasgow and, growing up in the 50s, I used to read all the Dundee comics and collect the jokes from them,” explained the former Conservative MP.

“The first letter I ever sent to someone who wasn’t a family member was to DC Thomson. I sent a joke – it was a joke about a joke...have you heard the joke about the pancake? Probably not, it fell flat.

“As a child, one of my role models was Duncan Macrae, who was a wonderful man. He had this lugubrious manner and waved his fingers around while performing

Gyles Brandreth these extraordinary poems. I tried to learn the poems of William Mcgonagall as a child. Duncan used to do similar poems and was hilarious. “I worked on some books together with Kenneth Williams and one of his best friends was Stanley Baxter. I got to know him and went to see him in Mother Goose at pantomime. I thought he was the funniest man I’d ever seen. There is no doubt Stanley’s Mother Goose is the greatest panto performance since Dan Leno, the English comic who was the first Mother Goose in 1902.

“Stanley told me a couple of Scottish knock knock jokes that I’ve included in the book. Knock