First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Michael O’Mara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright © Tracy and Charlotte Dawson

for the Estate of Les Dawson 2012

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84317-870-5 in hardback print format

ISBN: 978-1-84317-987-0 in EPub format

ISBN: 978-1-84317-988-7 in Mobipocket format

Designed by Design 23, London

Illustrations by Greg Stevenson

www.mombooks.com

Dedication

For all the people who loved Les throughout his

life and continue to keep his memory alive.

Contents

Introduction by Tracy and Charlotte Dawson

Take my mother-in-law ...

Just for a laugh

I wouldn’t say

I said to the wife ...

When I was a lad ...

Family matters

Limericks

No, really, take my wife ...

All in a day’s work

Acknowledgements

Introduction

by Tracy and Charlotte Dawson

Tracy

‘You know Les Dawson?’

‘’Course. Comedian. Famous. Been dead a while, but you still find clips of him everywhere. And DVDs and stuff. Very funny man.’

‘He was a writer.’

‘Nah, he was a stand-up comic. Had his own TV shows for years. Good pianist, too, though he liked to mess about, playing bum notes and stuff.’

‘Sure, but he was a writer too.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

That’s an imaginary conversation, of course, but to paraphrase Michael Caine, not a lot of people know that. Writing was one of the great joys of Les’s life, and
he would spend hours in his study composing new gags, honing old ones and putting together new material for all his shows. Les left me a cupboard full of fabulously funny material, some typed, some
handwritten, and said it was for our daughter Charlotte’s legacy. There were sketches and opening spots, one-line gags and jottings of ideas for development – as well as some much
longer works. He once made me promise to make sure that people knew he was a writer as well as a comedian, and I hope you agree that the following pages show off his talent in both departments
brilliantly.

It’s hard to believe it, but June 2013 marks twenty years since Les died. Twenty years! It is astonishing to me that he’s been gone for so long. It is true that the really great
comedians never die; you have only to think of Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe, Spike Milligan – and Les – to know that. But a part of the reason for his enduring appeal is
that he’s still so well loved: everyone still remembers him so fondly. And it’s not just the ‘older’ generation either, for today’s rising young comedians often cite
Les as one of their comedy heroes, bringing him to a whole new generation of younger people.

Les put his whole life into making people laugh, and he absolutely loved his work. The phrase ‘once seen, never forgotten’ might have been coined for him, and that is true of his
newer audience of people who have perhaps only ever seen him on DVDs or television repeats. His audiences – as well as people he passed daily in the street – warmed to him because he
was just like them in many ways. His act was appealing because everyone felt as if they knew him personally. And that’s why, when you read his jokes and patter, it’s hard to do so
without putting on his voice and hearing him tell them to you direct.

Charlotte

I was only tiny when my dad died but I know how much he loved me – and still does. Although I missed out on having him with me through my childhood, I do think I’m
quite lucky in a way, as his legacy certainly lives on. I love watching him perform. I share his sense of humour and fun, and I can see why people love him so much after all these years – his
humour is timeless. And, of course, lots of people – family, friends and strangers alike – have fantastic memories of him that they have shared with me over the years.

I’m really proud to be his daughter and I hope he’s proud to know that I’m following in his footsteps into the world of entertainment.

This book – a collection of Les’s jokes, stories and one-liners – sparkles with his humour. It cannot fail to bring a smile to all his fans – both
those who knew Les during his life and those who have come to enjoy his humour over the last twenty years.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed compiling it.

TRACY DAWSON

CHARLOTTE DAWSON

I took the mother-in-law to Madame Tussauds Chamber of Horrors and one of the attendants said, ‘Keep her moving, sir, we’re stocktaking.’

She’s so fat that when she passes her handbag from hand to hand she throws it.

She’s so fat that when she went to the doctor for a check-up he said, ‘I’ll get the car out and have a look around you.’

The only success the mother-in-law ever had was with the council – selling her mince pie lids as manhole covers.

I spent three weeks pushing a pan scrubber in the baby’s face.

I want him to get used to kissing his grandmother.

The mother-in-law – she’s a sort of Third World War with knickers.

When my mother-in-law smiled it looked like a crack across a septic tank.

I‘ve never seen eye to eye with the mother-in-law – not surprising, she’s well over six foot – and what a size! When she
stands in the nude she looks like a wall of whitewash. She’s so fat she had to lose weight to model maternity frocks. She’s the only woman I know who eats piranha fish – live. She
never stops talking – she’s got a fan belt fitted to her tongue.

She took the father-in-law to a psychiatrist. She said, ‘There’s something wrong with him, he never hears a word I say.’

The psychiatrist said, ‘That’s not an affliction – it’s a bloody gift.’

It’s been a rotten week, this. Four times at three o’ clock in the morning a finger has poked me in the ear and a little voice
whispered, ‘Take me to the bathroom, please.’

I said to the wife yesterday, ‘I’m fed up with this. It’s time your mother went on her own now.’

All the mother-in-law talks about is how mean her husband is. When he found out he was going bald, rather than buy a wig, he changed his religion so he could wear a turban. I wouldn’t say
he’s that mean, although he does keep an old-fashioned mangle out in the back yard to get the last kick from his toothpaste tubes.

I upset the wife’s mother last Guy Fawkes night.

I fell off the fire.

She possessed all the charm only to be found in a Tunisian culvert.

My God, my mother-in-law can talk!

Still, you’d expect to find a long tongue in an old boot.

Wife: ‘We’re having mother for dinner.’

Me: ‘Really? I’d prefer lamb.’

I left the wife’s mother in the car.

I’d have brought her in but I lost the keys to the boot.

During the War she was an Avon Lady. In Colditz.

She’s getting too old to dye her hair properly – remember the old saying ‘only the good dye young’?

She has so many wrinkles that when she smiles she looks like a Venetian blind.

There’s only one thing wrong ...

I’m often accused of saying some pretty rotten things about my mother-in-law. But quite honestly she’s only got one major fault – it’s called breathing.
It’s hard to describe what she looks like but she used to be a model for spanners. She’s a hell of a size. When she crosses her legs it’s like looking at two sides of bacon in a
stranglehold . . . She hung her brassiere out on the line to dry the other day and a camel tried to make love to it . . . She’s got more chins than a Chinese telephone directory.

Last week in Crewe she bent down and they had an eclipse in Burma. It’s ridiculous, every time she hangs her knickers up people think we’ve painted the house. During the war the
French wanted to give her a medal but they couldn’t get a general to kiss her. I don’t blame them. Her face has stopped so many clocks they’ve had to blindfold Big Ben.

My mother-in-law fell down a wishing well.

I was amazed. I never knew they worked.

She called me a thief, a coward, a rat, a skunk and a liar.

I was blazing, because I’m not a liar.

The wife’s mother’s got so many gold teeth she sleeps with her head in a strong box.

My mother-in-law gives such frosty looks her glasses are double-glazed.

My mother-in-law went on holiday last week.

The parrot thought he’d gone deaf.

Time’s a great healer...

She came to live with us a month ago. I remember the day well – although time’s a great healer. I’d woke up and was lay listening to the rent man digging a
tunnel into the living room – he never gets paid round our way, he has to bring a violin and busk for his money. The wife was lay on her back fast asleep like a baby, with a big toe in her
mouth. As usual she was wearing a mudpack. I’ll never get used to it – she looks like quicksand with curlers . . .

Just then I heard a knock on the front door. I knew it was the wife’s mother because the mice were putting cheese back on the traps and our cat had kittens – and he’s a
doctored tom. I opened the door before the paint peeled and there she was: Captain Birdseye with corsets. When she kissed me on the cheek it was like being attacked by an inner tube.

The wife came down. She said, ‘Have you put the gas fire on in my mother’s room?’

I said, ‘Yes, but I’ve not lit it.’

The mother-in-law was at the rugby this week – not staying – playing.

Me and the wife were held up on our honeymoon. They took everything.

The wife said, ‘I saved our money and camera by putting them in my mouth.’

I said, ‘Pity your mother wasn’t with us, we’d have saved our suitcases.’

The wife’s mother said, ‘When you’re dead, I’ll dance on your grave.’

I said, ‘Good. I’m being buried at sea.’

My mother-in-law is kind – kind of fat and baggy.

Cleopatra lay stretched out on the heaped Arabian pony skins, like a sensuous throbbing cat. As her handmaidens oiled her shimmering body she
glowed in anticipation of seeing Antony, her lover.

The flickering pallid flame from the rush lights threw her tawny magnificence into bold relief against the wine-dark hides of the tent. Antony entered the scented dimness and, throwing aside his
armour, he took her into his arms in a heated embrace – his masculine musk making heady her senses.

She whispered, ‘Antony, my dear heart, let’s not go out tonight – let’s have a musical evening at home.’

‘How mean you, angel?’ said Antony, biting into a faggot sandwich.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ve booked a lute player from a working-men’s club. And here’s the first act.’ She clapped her hands and a slave from Gaul was
thrown onto the floor. He was drunk – definitely a Gaul stoned. Two naked Nubian eunuchs then wheeled a brass gong across his body.

And Cleopatra sang, ‘I’m rolling a gong on the chest of a slave . . .’

Mosquitoes draw straws to see who’s going to bite her.

You can’t give her a pinch – it’s a handful or nothing.

Tomorrow it’s the mother-in-law’s funeral – and she’s cancelled it.

She hasn’t got vital statistics, just cubic capacity.

Crime

I was leaving the house the other morning and in the front garden I saw the mother-in-law lying on the rockery being attacked by six big fellows armed with pickaxe handles.

The woman next door said, ‘Aren’t you going to help?’

I said, ‘Why should I? I don’t know who started it.’

She grabbed my arm and screamed down my ear, ‘Stop it before they batter her to pieces!’ I was instantly furious – if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s
anybody screaming down my ear.

But that incident highlights how serious crime is today. The local bank got robbed last week. A masked gunman ran in – slipped on a banana skin. His gun went off, his mask fell off as he
banged his head and his braces snapped as he lay on the floor. The bank manager said, ‘Is this a hold up?’ The fellow said, ‘No, a cock up.’

The other night a youngster across the street shot his parents so he could go on an orphans’ picnic. I’ve never seen kids like them – they go taking hubcaps off cars . . .
while they’re moving.

Last week a girl was raped by an idiot. I said, ‘How do you know he was an idiot?’

The girl replied, ‘I had to show him what to do.’

Violence is on the increase in this country. In some parts nuns have started going round with steel-tipped rosary beads.

The vicar at our local church asked a choirboy, ‘Where is your daddy?’ He responded, ‘My daddy’s gone up above.’

The vicar said gently, ‘He’s gone to heaven, my son.’

The lad said, ‘No, he’s taking the lead off the roof.’

Everybody’s at it: a man from down the street came up to me on my way to the studio tonight and said, ‘Stick ’em up.’ I said, ‘Stick what up?’ and he said,
‘I’m not sure, I’m new to this game.’

I fed the mother-in-law arsenic with sun tan lotion so she’d look good at the funeral.

My mother-in-law has come round to our house at Christmas seven years running. This year we’re going to have a change. We’re going to let her in.

I stood entranced as he lightly fingered his crochets. He turned and when he saw me he whispered, ‘It’s Schubert.’

I said, ‘It isn’t, I smelt it when I came in.’

The service in restaurants gets worse. I said to one waiter, ‘Do I sit here until I starve?’ He said, ‘No, we shut the kitchens at six.’

Waxing lyrical

In awe I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter
and Mars hang, forever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought … I must put a roof on this lavatory.

I went to a guesthouse. The manager said, ‘You want a room with running water?’ I said, ‘What do you think I am, a trout?’

I had a car once, I called it Flattery because it never got me anywhere. It was a Manchester convertible – half car, half canoe. Six months of the year it was a raft.

Picasso got run over the other day. He drew a sketch of the car and the following day the police arrested a plate of spaghetti and a cake tin.

Fat Sam

A friend of mine had a cousin called Sam, a fat fellow who owned a disco in San Francisco. My friend Ivor went to visit him and he drove to ’Frisco in a rented hearse. He
had a great time and then found that he’d lost the hearse. It wasn’t until three days later he remembered where he’d left it and he sang, ‘Ivor left my hearse in Fat
Sam’s disco …’

She was the flabbiest stripper I’ve ever seen.

When she ran off the stage she started her own applause.

A duck goes into a chemist’s shop.

‘A tube of lipsol, please.’

The chemist said, ‘Certainly. That’ll be 50 pence.’

‘Just put it on my bill.’

Man: ‘Why are your hands so filthy?’

Barber: ‘Nobody’s asked for a shampoo yet.’

I danced the polka with a typical German fraulein. She was the spitting image of Goering. The band played all the old German songs like ‘Annie
Get Your Luger’ and a wartime song about paratroops from the Rhine Valley invading the town of Minehead. You might know it, it was called ‘Rhine Troops are Falling on
Minehead.’

I was changing a tyre on my car the other day and a fellow pulled up and opened my bonnet. I said, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

He said, ‘If you’re having the wheels, I’m having the battery.’

Judge: ‘Is this the first time you’ve been up before me?’

Prisoner: ‘I don’t know – what time do you normally get up?’

Man in café: ‘I want my toast burnt and the egg running all over the plate.’

Waiter: ‘We wouldn’t serve anything like that.’

Man: ‘Well, you did yesterday.’

Two flies on a bald head. One says to the other, ‘I remember when this was a footpath.’

My lad chewed and swallowed a dictionary.

We gave him Epsom salts – but we can’t get a word out of him.

What a girl – I first met her when she was siphoning petrol out of a lawnmower.

The way prices are rising, the good old days are last week.

My watch fell on the floor.

It wasn’t broken, it fell on its hands.

My room is near the railway station. Every time a train goes by it shakes so bad the bedbugs use gliders.

Don’t know where they got the steak from but I was halfway through it when someone shouted ‘whoa!’, and I damn near choked.

He died of drink – we cremated him and it took eight weeks to put the fire out.

I crossed a parrot with a hen – got an egg that tells you when it’s done.

I saw an old woman carrying a basket of fish. I said, ‘Skate?’

She said, ‘It takes me all my time to walk.’

A tramp is in court for stealing an overcoat.

Judge: ‘My man, you’re incorrigible! Three years ago you were up before me for stealing an overcoat and here you are again. What have you to say?’

Tramp: ‘How long do you think overcoats last?!’

A man is pushing a piano on a cart.

Neighbour: ‘Are you taking it back?’

Man: ‘No, I’m going for my first lesson.’

A Scotsman returned from America after ten years. His two brothers met him, both with beards down to their knees. The returning Scotsman was
annoyed. ‘You both look a mess! My own brothers and ye meet me without having a shave!’

‘It’s your fault – when ye left ye took the razor!’

‘Do you believe in free speech?’

‘Yes. Can I use your phone?’

I won a trip to China. I’m there now trying to win a trip back.

In the recent honours list there were six shoemakers given the OBE. The Queen was surprised. I wasn’t; this government’s making cobblers of everything.

He once ran a mile in a minute – his braces were caught in an E-Type Jag.

His brain is so weak he wears crutches behind his ears.

Man is born, lives and when dead we bury him and he becomes dust and fertilizes the Earth. So be careful what you tread in, it could be your uncle.

She was so mean she went to have her finger read.

‘Your son is in a class by himself.’

‘Is he clever?’

‘No. He smells.’

A fellow went to the doctor’s. ‘I’ve broken my neck,’ he said.

‘Keep your chin up,’ the doctor replied.

A fellow went to a doctor and sneezed.

The doctor asked, ‘Have you flu?’

‘No, I came on the bus.’

I think I’m a pair of curtains.

Well, pull yourself together.

Heroism

Out of the Second World War came many stories of valour and heroism. From Dunkirk to Normandy the spirit of Britain was a burning torch that flamed steadfast in the face of the
jackbooted tyranny. One story that has never been told outside the War Office sums up for all time the stoicism of our island race. It concerns flying officer Everett Lavender Gumboil, who used to
be a ballet dancer in Runcorn.

One morning in 1943, he was flying one of ten Spitfires, and was going over to Germany on a leaflet raid. All the planes returned safely except for Everett’s. All night they waited, but no
sign of him. The mess was quiet; the commanding officer said hoarsely, ‘He may have been a bit of a fruit, but a good type was old Everett.’

A fortnight went by and into view came Everett’s Spitfire. Everybody rushed out to him, he got out and said, ‘Oh what a fortnight I’ve had! The bullets, the noise!’

His commanding officer said, ‘Where the hell have you been? The others dropped their leaflets and got back the same day!’

Everett replied, ‘Did you say drop the leaflets? I’ve been shoving them through letter boxes!’

I know a man who had injections for smallpox, chicken pox and measles.

He died by leaking to death.

A man on a waterbed was set on fire and got poached to death.

A man divorced his wife because he’d heard divorcees were more passionate.

I think I’m going insane, doctor.

Yes, maddening, isn’t it?

Why did you shoot your husband with a bow and arrow?

I didn’t want to wake the kids!

The garage towed me two miles.

But I got my money’s worth, I kept my brakes on all the time.

He’s the only man I know with a varicose brain.

He went to a mind reader – and only got charged half price.

He had a brain operation; it cost £20 – and that included £16 search fees.

The train was so crowded I got on reading a book called The Grapes of Wrath – I was so crushed I got off with a pint of wine.

Our climate gets worse. One day it’s warm, one day it’s cold.

You never know what clothes to pawn.

The traffic on the roads gets even worse. I saw a car in a traffic jam the other day with ‘Just Married’ on the boot and three kids in the back.

You can’t trust anybody. I went for a meal in a café. When I got up to leave someone had pinched my overcoat.

I said to the waiter, ‘Somebody’s took my overcoat.’

The waiter said, ‘I know.’

I said, ‘Well, what did he look like?’

He said, ‘Awful, the sleeves were too short.’

Hotels/Sportsmen

I made a pilgrimage recently to a site in Yorkshire where they’re building a sewage works. As I watched the workmen scurrying like ants in the heaped clay, tears coursed
down my cheeks because, only ten years ago, on that site stood one of the finest hotels in the world – The Ritz Waldorf Imperial, Otley.

I started work there as a wine chiller and rose to be under-manager of the third floor linen cupboards and brine bath.

One night I was sat in my office siphoning petrol from a lawnmower, when in came a porter called Horace Cakepole. He asked, ‘Who’s staying in room 94?’ I said, ‘The
famous Olympic underwater swimmer, Pierre Cork. Why? What’s wrong?’

He said, ‘He’s lying at the bottom of the swimming pool in the deep end, and I reckon he’s a show off.’

‘Why?’ I asked

‘Because he’s been down there a month.’

The plane travels so fast you can eat a pickled onion in London and belch in Moscow.

He bought that suit by accident – it fits like a bandage.

Man: ‘I’d like some rat poison.’

Chemist: ‘I haven’t got any but why don’t you try Boots?’

Man: ‘I want to poison ’em, not kick ’em to death.’

He’s a great doctor. He made an invigorating pill – cascara coated – he gave one to his eighty-seven-year-old grandfather who’d been bedridden sixty-five
years – took one pill, couldn’t stay in bed a minute.

‘Doctor, tell me, is it serious?’

‘No, but don’t bother buying any new suits.’

I said to the doctor, ‘Will you sign me off?’ He said, ‘That’s impossible sir – you’re already a write-off.’

We buried Aunt Cissie – had an awful letter from the burial company – if we don’t pay the last instalment, up she comes.

What’s the world coming to? Every time you open the newspapers it’s Sex! Violence! Robbery! And that’s only the sports results.

‘I’ll give you 40 pills in a box.’

‘Thanks, it’s hopeless trying to roll ’em home.’

‘Does your nose burn?’

‘Yes, if I set fire to it.’

I love the women in Spain. Met a lovely girl there – Carmen Cohen – she didn’t know if she was Carmen or Cohen.

Oh, the women in France! Kim Novak, Bridget Bardot, Gladys Maggs – that’s the one I went out with. She was so thin she had latticework for varicose veins.

‘You run like Matthews.’

‘Who? Stanley?’

‘No, Jessie.’

What a quack

I’m not very keen on our local doctor, because quite frankly he’s a bigger quack than Mother Goose. He’s so old-fashioned he lances a boil on horseback and
when he operates he doesn’t use any anaesthetic, he makes you bite on a bullet. He’ll have to retire soon as he’s running out of leeches.

I saw him the other day. He said, ‘Why don’t you come and see me? I’m still practising.’ I said, ‘In that case, I’ll come back when you’re
perfect.’

My neighbour old Cissie Ackroyd went to see him about her ninety-nine-year-old brother. She said he couldn’t come himself as he’s ill.

The doctor said, ‘Illness stems from the subconscious – he only thinks he’s ill. Tell him that, make him repeat it every day.’ The following week the doctor
called to see her. ‘How’s your brother now?’

‘Oh, he’s worse, doctor. He thinks he’s dead!’

Emmerdale Farm … a sort of Dynasty with dung.

We got married in the backyard so the hens could peck the rice.

I discovered the wife’s got asthma.

Thank God – I thought she was hissing at me.

Meanness

Sandy MacPuddle was close to death. He lay on his wooden bed with the sound of the sea booming around his Hebridean cottage. His wife was out swimming under the bridges and had
left instructions to Sandy that if he felt himself slipping away, would he blow the candle out and order one egg for breakfast. Sandy wasn’t looking at anything so he took his glasses off to
save the lenses, and unlocked his purse so he could oil the turnstile in it.

The following night he was halfway in the arms of the Grim Reaper and all his family were gathered around.

His brother said, ‘We’ll make do with two cars – one for Sandy and one for the twelve of us.’

Sandy’s wife said, ‘One car will be enough; we can strap Sandy on the luggage rack – that way we’ll save an awful lot of money.’

An uncle in the corner said, ‘Suppose we put wheels and a sail on the coffin and pray for a wind to carry him to the cemetery?’

At which point Sandy sat up and said, ‘Pass me my trousers and I’ll walk to the bloody cemetery!’

Cowboys

My grandpappy was an old Indian fighter. That’s what he married – an old Indian. In the Battle of Sioux River he had 100 arrows in his back and lived to tell the
tale then died of woodworm.

I said, ‘Those Indians, pappy, were they blackfoot?’

He said, ‘I’m not sure, but their vests were filthy.’

I said, ‘When you were on the plain, did you see any bison?’

‘No, I had a wash in a bucket.’

My horse was on a coat hanger – it’s a mustang. As I rode into Tombstone I fell over it and broke my collarbone. I was surrounded by redskins – I’d fallen on a tomato
stall. A bald Indian came up so I sold him a hot poultice to keep in his wigwam – he said, ‘Come to tepee.’ I said, ‘Thank you, I’m bursting.’

His wife was so fat she was the last squaw to break a camel’s back.

Count Dracula

Perhaps the most horrific story ever told is the blood-curdling tale of Count Dracula. The first do-it-yourself blood bank. What isn’t widely known is that he was engaged
to a woman in Cleethorpes. She was a chef in a rissole bakery and at weekends played the accordion for Asian Morris dancers.

One blustery night in November, her drawers blew off the line and finished up in the local cemetery. As she was picking them up off a grave a hand came up and got its fingers caught in the
gusset. She hit the hand with a burial urn and shouted, ‘Get off you randy corpse!’ Just then the earth parted and revealed Count Dracula.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I’m from Gravesend.’

‘Oh, by your accent, I thought you were from Bury.’

He came closer and his fangs sank into her neck, and it was love at first bite. ‘I’ll never forget your teeth,’ she said. ‘Fangs for the memory.’

They went on courting for six months and spent their time in pubs with Dracula biting her neck in the vault. One day she was lying in bed white as a sheet and her mother said, ‘I
haven’t seen you in the pub lately wit’ fella wit’ cloak and big teeth.’

She said, ‘Nay, I’ve finished with him.’

‘Why, lass?’

‘Cos I’m fed up with being stuck for the drinks.’

Two years ago I went to Scotland and taught the hornpipe to strike pickets. During the exploding trouser riots I met Hamish Macquirtle. He was a
son of the soil, his father was a son of the soil and his grandfather was a son of the soil – in fact, they were the dirtiest family in Scotland.

He was engaged to a caber tossing dwarf called Winnie, who worked in a chamber pot factory. One night while playing squash in a pub vault, a cockney whispered in her ear, and she went straight
to Hamish. ‘Hamish,’ she said, ‘That man from Battersea has just offered me £5 if I’ll make love to him all night.’

Hamish picked the cockney up and gave him a good hiding. When he’d finished, the cockney said, ‘What did you do that for?’

Hamish said, ‘That’ll teach you to bring your London prices up here.’

I wouldn’t say they were posh but the toilet coughed before it flushed.

I wouldn’t say they were posh but the mice made trap reservations.

I wouldn’t say the food was bad but Fanny Craddock was picketing the oven.

I wouldn’t say our kitchen smells, but sometimes we leave the gas on to clear the air.

I wouldn’t say the show was lousy but it was such a cheap version of South Pacific it was called South Pathetic.

I wouldn’t say he drinks to excess but if he beats you to the bar, you’ve had it.

I wouldn’t say she was fat but the WeightWatchers wore blinkers.

I wouldn’t say she was fat but when she went for a dress fitting the assistants worked in shifts.

I wouldn’t say she was fat but when she wants a new dress she goes to a quantity surveyor.

I wouldn’t say she’s immature but she thinks Postman’s Knock is a game of skill … Mind you, the way I play it, it is!

I wouldn’t say she was fat but she doesn’t wear corsets, she uses bailing wire.

I wouldn’t say she was fat but she had so many chins she uses a bookmark to find her mouth.

I wouldn’t say the house was damp but the kids went to bed with a periscope.

I wouldn’t say the house was damp but the woodworm breathed through straws.

I wouldn’t say the house was damp but the goldfish climbed out of the bowl to breathe.

I wouldn’t say the house was damp but we didn’t go into the cellar for coal unless we wore shark repellent.

I wouldn’t say the wife talks too much, but all the parrot can say is, ‘But … But … But …’

I wouldn’t say the rooms were small but we used a folding toothbrush in the bathroom.

I wouldn’t say the room was small but you had to buy bananas ready peeled.

I wouldn’t say she was skinny but her legs were so bony her knees made a fist.

I wouldn’t say the room was small but the woodworm were round-shouldered.

I wouldn’t say the room was small but when I talked to myself one of us had to step outside to reply.

I wouldn’t say the room was small but the toaster lay on its side.

I wouldn’t say the room was small but you had to soak your dentures in shifts.

I wouldn’t say my daughter’s promiscuous but when they had a sex education lesson at school she embarrassed the teacher.

I wouldn’t say the plane was old but they didn’t say, ‘Fasten your seatbelts’, they shouted, ‘Buckle your breastplates.’

I wouldn’t say she was thin, but I’ve seen more meat on a British Rail sandwich.

I wouldn’t say she’s fast but if you’re planning an orgy, she’s the girl to organize it.

I wouldn’t say the plane was old but we were hijacked by the Wright Brothers.

I wouldn’t say she was ugly but her face was lifted so often they had to lower her body.

I wouldn’t say he’s got a big mouth but he can eat a banana in one – sideways.

I wouldn’t say she was ugly but the milkman flirts with me.

I wouldn’t say she was ugly but she went for a swim in Loch Ness and the monster got out and picketed the lake.

It’s a funny thing how you meet the woman that you marry. I met the wife in a tunnel of love. She was digging it.

My wife said, ‘You remind me of the sea.’

I said, ‘You mean restless, wild and passionate?’

‘No, you make me sick.’

Wife: ‘I want a man who can kiss me like Rock Hudson, hold me like Marlon Brando and make my blood boil like Kirk Douglas.’

I said: ‘I can bite you like Lassie.’

My wife’s so ignorant. We saw a pile of milk bottles. She said, ‘Look! A cow’s nest.’

Reasonable

I once fell in love with a lady contortionist. She used to bend over backwards and pick up a handkerchief with her teeth. Then for an encore she used to pick up her teeth. What
a figure – you couldn’t tell if she had bare legs or stockings lined with grapefruit. I asked her one night if she was free. She said no but she’d be reasonable. I called her
Daisy because she grew wild on the grass. I’m not saying she was fat but she used to model circus tents. And what a face! She once sucked on a lemon and the lemon pulled a face. She was so
ugly she got a job advertising iodine. She had some ways – she used to go to bed with a ruler to see how long she’d slept.

When you dance with someone you care for, to some their eyes grow misty with emotion; others, their throats become dry; and some people find their
hearts beat faster. When I first danced with the wife I got a tingling sensation in my leg – she was scratching me with her bike clips.

I went to my wife’s father, ‘I’d ’er ’er.’

‘Certainly you can have her, son, with pleasure.’

‘Have who?’

‘My daughter’s hand in marriage, of course!’

‘No, you don’t understand – I want to borrow a fiver off you.’

‘Not likely – I hardly know you!’

I took her for better or for worse. But she turned out worse than I took her for.

Eating out

I took the wife out the other night to a restaurant. The waitress came over, picking her nose. I said, ‘Have you got eczema?’

She said, ‘Only what you see on the menu.’

We ordered crab. When it came the wife said, ‘It stinks.’

The waiter said it was fresh from the sea this morning.

The wife said, ‘Well it must have trod in something on the way out.’

She’s no idea, my wife. She once sent a plate of scampi back because she said it smelt fishy – and her table manners are atrocious. I took her on a cruise last year and when she
drank her soup the captain stood up and shouted, ‘Abandon ship!’

Apart from the wife grumbling about the crab, I enjoyed my night out, until I got the bill. I said to the waiter, ‘This is far too much for what we’ve had.’

He said, ‘I assure you it’s the correct amount. I have the chits.’

I said, ‘What the bloody hell do you think I’ve got?’

After the meal I said to the waiter, ‘What about the tip?’

He said, ‘Leave it, I’ll clean the mess up when you’ve gone.’

My wife’s not lost her looks … she’s just as ugly as the day I married her.

The neighbours think I’m a ventriloquist.

When I open my mouth she speaks.

She had a blemish between her ears – a head.

My wife’s so thin, I’ve seen more fat on a cold chip.

She has a big lower lip – but you didn’t notice it because her top lip covered it.

My wife’s so ugly – when she was a child she used to play ‘penny or a kiss’. At the age of eighteen she bought a car.

What a cook

I bought her a pressure cooker. God knows what she did with it but she’s the first woman I know to put a turnip in orbit. She came lumbering into our room the other night
reeking of gin and her nightdress was covered in snuff stains. I could tell she was upset because her eye patch wasn’t on properly and her duelling scar was livid.

She shook my shoulder with a hand the size of a dinner gong and whispered, ‘There’s a prowler downstairs.’

I asked, ‘What’s he doing?’

She said, ‘He’s sat in the kitchen eating my homemade rissoles.’

So I got back into bed.

She said, ‘Aren’t you going to phone for the police?’

‘Why bother?’ I replied. ‘I’ll go down in the morning and bury him.’

I was lying in bed the other morning playing a lament on my euphonium when the wife, who was prising her teeth out of an apple, looked at me and
said softly, ‘Joey.’ She calls me Joey because she always wanted a budgie.

She said, ‘I’m homesick.’

I said, ‘But, precious one, this is your home.’ She said, ‘I know, and I’m sick of it.’

I’m not saying the wife’s fat, but she puts her knickers on with a tyre lever.

I live like a king.

When I go home I get crowned.

The wife bought a chicken last week. It was so old its beak was crowned and capped.

She was so ignorant, she thought a millimetre was a Spanish earwig.

She was only a sewage worker’s daughter but she was nothing to be sniffed at. She was stood putting snuff up her nose with the end of a
snooker cue. She had a donkey under her arm – she just had it for kicks.

I said, ‘Can I hire that donkey?’

She said, ‘Yes, there’s a screw under its saddle.’

She was a funny looking woman; she had so many chins the bottom one was soled and heeled.

Marriage is an institution and that’s where a couple finish up.

Two can live as cheaply as one – providing she’s got lockjaw.

My wife is a suicide blonde – dyed by her own hand.

She’s the only woman I know with Technicolor dandruff.

When we met time stood still – the clock stopped.

She had her face lifted – but they’d tightened the skin so much when she raised her eyebrows she hitched her knickers up.

She’s just like her mother. Ah, I can see her now, with that funny hat on, huddled over a steaming cauldron. And then flying out the window on her broomstick.

A wife was determined to cure her husband’s drinking. He staggered into bed one night, and she came in with a sheet over her head carrying a
torch. He sat up and screamed, ‘Who’s that?’

‘The devil,’ said his wife.

They shook hands. ‘Oh, I married your sister.’

My wife is so ignorant. She has no idea of anything – especially music. She thought Bizet’s Carmen was a Spanish bus driver.

Clergymen

Our local vicar came to see us the other day to say goodbye before he left for his new parish.

The wife said, ‘We’ll be sorry to see you go, vicar. We didn’t know what sin was until you came.’

Personally, I never liked him. He’d no sense of humour – he had to make an appointment to see a joke. And his sermons were so boring people used to put pep pills in the collection
plate.

One Sunday he was worse than ever. The church bell had muffled its clapper. He looked at his congregation and thundered, ‘You dismal sinners! Look at you all, asleep, except for that poor
man you have the audacity to call the Village Idiot!’

The Village Idiot stood up and shouted, ‘Aye, and if I wasn’t so bloody daft I’d be asleep with ’em!’

A hard drinker

My mother, bless her, was musically minded. As a child, I used to climb on her knee and whisper, ‘Mummy, Mummy, sing me lullaby do.’

And she’d say, ‘Certainly, my little angel, my wee bundle of happiness. Hold me beer while I fetch me banjo.’

Mother wasn’t a hard drinker – she found it easy. She was in hospital for a week and Guinness shares dropped. We had so many empty beer bottles in the backyard it put £300 on
the price of the house.

The vicar said to her once, ‘You wicked woman. Every time I see you you’ve got a bottle in your hand.’

Mother said, ‘Well, I can’t keep it in my mouth all day.’

What a woman. She crawled home from so many pubs we had her fitted out with crab feelers.

I think my father used to collect old musical instruments – at least the police used to call round once a week and ask him where he’d put the loot. He’s been in jail so often
when he did finally go straight the prison missed him so much they asked him to go back part-time.

When I was a child, I had wax in my ears.

Dad didn’t take me to the doctor, he used me as a night light.

I’m not saying I was an ugly baby, but as I was being born the midwife took one look at me and shouted to my mother, ‘For God’s sake, bear up!’

Sporting feats

My granddad was a boxer and my grandmother was a cocker spaniel. I was a boxer too but I wasn’t very good. I was known as ‘Wash Day’ because I was always
hanging over the ropes. I was carried out of the ring so often I had handles sewn on my shorts. In my first fight the referee said to my opponent, ‘You’ll be disqualified if you hit him
below the belt,’ so I wore turtle-necked shorts.

What a fight that was – I was so far behind on points I had to knock the other fellow out to get a draw.

I was a superstitious boxer – I wouldn’t fight without a horseshoe in my glove. In my last fight I got knocked out so cold they picked me up with ice tongs.

Then I became a footballer. I ran like Best – not George … Edna. I tried weightlifting. I once press lifted 900lbs in a competition and on winning it added yet another wonderful
double hernia to my record.

My grandfather played the trombone in bed.

It upset gran – chipped paint off her guitar.

My father was a small man. In fact he suffered from athlete’s foot on his chin.

Mother was so tiny she had castors on her earrings.

Dad wanted me to call me Simon – because I was beginning to look so simple.

We had a great big piano – a family could have lived in it – then they’d all have their own key.

I had a very strict upbringing. I wasn’t allowed in the house till I was eight.

I’m not saying my mother didn’t like me but she kept looking for loopholes in my birth certificate.

My parents did a double act – it resulted in a failure – me.

A hard life...

The main ingredient in the crucible of society is the family. Everyone’s got a family tree – mine’s a weeping willow. My mother used to look at me and say,
‘I don’t know what to make of him.’

And my father used to say, ‘Have you thought of a rug?’

Dad didn’t like me; in fact the night I was kidnapped by gypsies, it was Father who drove the caravan for them. We lived in a poor district. We were living up to the Joneses next door
– and they were under the care of Oxfam. Things were so bad we used to go out and rob tramps.

It was a broken home. Everything we used we broke. The only thing in good condition was the bath. We weren’t a very clean family. The safest place to keep money was under the soap. I was a
mess – I had understains on my understains.

My family were unusual people. My grandmother was raised for the law. At least I once heard the neighbours say she was brought up for soliciting. My grandfather was an athlete – a famous
shot putter. He was picked for the Olympics until they saw where he was putting it. He was a fine-looking man – he got a part in the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame but got fired
because he kept slipping down off Charles Laughton’s shoulder.

My uncle was an actor. He once played a supporting role in a jungle picture – he was Tarzan’s truss. He enjoyed it – told everybody he’d had a ball.

Funny how you get into this business, though I suppose the stage was in my blood. My great grandmother was a gaiety girl in London – men drank
champagne from her slipper and blew kisses in her ear. She died at the age of ninety-eight, deaf and with damp feet.

My father was a big drinker – my birth certificate was printed on a cork.

Mother didn’t want me – she got my bath ready one night and when I put my duck in the water, it melted.

Mother ran the house like clockwork – everything we had was on tick.

Red Indian

When I was a small boy of seven I wandered away from a school nature ramble and found myself lost and alone on a bleak moor that was swept by a spiteful wind. Cuffed and
buffeted by its anger I sought refuge under a frowning crag and when the wind finally died away to a whimper I crept out and, looking up, I saw an old Red Indian squatting on top of the rock, his
coppery profile thrown like a rare coin against the blue-dipped sky. His voice when he spoke was like somebody drawing a rake across dried leaves.

He said, ‘Me Red Cloud. Me know all. Remember everything.’

Childishly, in my frightened state, I shouted, ‘What did you have for breakfast thirty years ago?’

He smiled, puckered his razor-thin lips and whispered, ‘Egg.’

The years scampered away but never once did I forget the old wise man. And last Wednesday, mentally worn and physically beaten by the world’s demands, I drove to that bleak moor and
stumbled across to the rock where I knew he would be – and he was – just as I remembered him, hunched in his blanket as still as the crag he sat on. In my eagerness to greet him I
raised my hand and shouted, ‘How.’

He said, ‘Fried.’

My brother did 100 yards in ten seconds – he fell down a lift shaft.

We were so poor our mouse left us and went to live with the church mice.

We were so poor that when dad was in prison on bread and water he put six stone on.

We were so poor, after the flag seller had called we had to fire a distress rocket.

Christmas

The best we could manage was five-a-side to a cracker, and the Christmas dinner was always the same – scotch pheasant – it was black pudding with a feather stuck in
it.

I remember with embarrassment how my father’s feet were so dirty that every time he hung his stocking up the tree died. I can only recall being given one Christmas box, it was called a
do-it-yourself electric train set – turned out to be a roll of fuse wire and a platform ticket …

Mind you, that Christmas period started out on the wrong foot. The local butcher charged the wife £10.50 for a turkey. I don’t know how long he’d had it in stock, but when I
plucked it I found it had an appendix scar. But what really made me mad was when I lifted up its wing I saw somebody had written ‘Kilroy was here’. Actually it didn’t taste too
bad. I complimented the wife. ‘What did you stuff it with?’ I asked.

She said, ‘I didn’t have to bother, sweetheart, it was already full.’

She has no idea … she made a Christmas pudding and the only tender part of it was the threepenny bit inside. Then, to crown it all the wife’s family descended on us. They went at
the food like a shoal of piranha fish. I’ve never seen table manners like theirs; they made the chimps’ tea party look like morning coffee with Godfrey Winn.

The wife’s mother got plastered and sang the songs she learned as a stormtrooper. I didn’t say anything. It’s hard to describe what she’s like but last August she stood
on the cliffs at Southend in a bikini and all you could see was illegal immigrants diving in screaming and swimming for home.

We hadn’t a telly. We used to sit and watch the fire go out. Then we’d go and order another shovelful of coal.

There’s a very strong military strain in my family. My great-great grandfather fought in the Boer War. He was a veteran of many campaigns – never decorated, but if
his behaviour is any guide, frequently plastered.

But music was my yearning. As a boy I used to get carried away playing the piano – mostly by the neighbours.

My father bred and transported bulls for fighting.

He was the biggest bull shipper in the country.

Friendship

I’ve always been a lonely person; nobody ever wanted me. When I was a baby I was left on so many doorsteps I thought daddy was a milk bottle. Mummy never used talcum
powder on me – I really roughed it. I had nappy rash on my nappy rash. Once she used self-raising flour on me and I broke out in Jaffa Cakes. When I grew up the only friend I had was a
grapefruit – but it was vicious if you bit it as it went for the eyes.

One day I was in an antique shop looking for a copy of Barry Cryer’s Topical Gags. They hadn’t got one; the archaeologists were still digging for them in Greece.

Lonely, I walked on past a pet shop and saw a beautiful budgie in a golden cage. The pet shop owner said it talked like W.C. Fields, sang like Vic Damone and spoke Shakespeare like John Gielgud.
I took it home but it never spoke nor sang. I bought it a silver bell, a perch, a gilt-edged mirror and it still didn’t sing or speak. Lying on the floor one day, it croaked, ‘You
forgot the bloody bird seed.’

Mother had most of the things that men desire – muscles and a moustache.

A billy goat used to look after me as a baby – we couldn’t afford a nanny.

Dad was called Ben, ma was called Anna – according to that I’m a benanna.

My father wanted me to be an athlete. He threw me in the canal, which is hard for a boy of six. The worst part was getting out of the sack.

My grandfather made money out of the slave trade – he sold my grandmother.

Grandad

Tonight is a special night for my family. It marks the anniversary of my great grandfather, who gave Alaska its first piece of folklore. In 1889 he was prospecting for gold in
the Mackenzie river and he fell in love with an Eskimo maiden who used to blow kisses to him across the icy stretch of water. He couldn’t get across to her – the water was too
treacherous – and for ten years they called out their love to each other from opposite banks. In 1909 he could stand it no longer. He jumped into the icy water to reach her and within ten
minutes he was frozen to death. The Eskimos still tell of the legend of their love and the water is still called after him – Lake Twit.

When I was a lad my teeth stuck out so much Mother rented me out as a till.

My father was in the horse artillery, but the feedbag kept falling off his ears.

Dad took me for boxing lessons.

The instructor said, ‘He fights like the Great Wilde!’

I said, ‘You mean Jimmy Wilde?’

He said, ‘No, Oscar.’

My father was a keen Trades Unionist.

He insisted on a tea break on his wedding night.

Dear old dad

My father once stumbled over a crate of whiskey – and he went on stumbling for the next three months. His nose became so red he was banned from the coast because he was a
hazard to shipping. He drank so heavily when he blew on a birthday cake he lit the candles. He was on the floor so often he got a job modelling lino. Mind you, he was good, he only kicked me down
the stairs once a day and he gave mother half of everything he stole – then suddenly after listening to a long-playing record of Billy Graham – he reformed. We had to get the doctor to
look at Father eventually. He diagnosed a severe attack of moth bites. My father said, ‘Impossible. We’ve a wardrobe full of moths and I know them all by their first names.’

My mother wanted me to be brought up at Eton.

My father said, ‘He looks as if he’s been eaten and brought up.’

One day a teacher said, ‘Find me the Alps.’

I said, ‘Can’t you remember where you put them?’

I used to be a boxer.

I fought like Cooper – not Henry, Gladys.

There were so many of us, Mother didn’t give us names, she had us branded.

I’ve had some bad news about the wife’s wealthy uncle who’s ill in hospital. He’s recovering. I went to see him last
week.

I said, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

He said, ‘Only one thing. Take your foot off the oxygen tube.’

The wedding

Of all the horrors that society can inflict upon us in our brief lives, nothing chills my blood more than that time-honoured tradition – the wedding reception. It usually
starts about half an hour after the wedding ceremony. It’s held either in a hall the size of Wembley or a living room designed for midgets.

I went to one last week. The wife’s eldest sister married a fellow who told us he was in the oil business. I found out after that he was a sardine packer. The wedding was held at three
o’clock. I’m not saying the bride looked a mess but the vicar wore blinkers. To start with she’s a funny shape, built like a jar of Bovril. She was wearing a wedding dress that
fitted her like a glove – an oven glove. When she knelt at the altar, her corsets burst and we had to hold her in place with guy ropes. The wife said her sister was pushing forty. Frankly,
she looked as if she was dragging it.

Her husband was wearing a hired dress suit. I’m not saying he looked a mess but Moss Bros. was picketing the church.

I’ve never seen a fellow so small: every time he pulls his socks up he gets a wool rash on his ears. He knelt at the altar and you could tell his nose was running as there was a rainbow
round his neck. The vicar looked at the bride, looked at the size of the groom and said, ‘Do you take this woman or will you have her delivered?’

The reception was held in the mother-in-law’s house. She’d obviously spent a bob or two on it – for a start there was smoked salmon on the table and nobody ill. We all had a
glass of lukewarm sherry – it tasted awful. God knows who trod the grapes for it but he must have had athlete’s foot. Everyone went for the food like runaway bullocks. I’ve never
seen table manners like it – it made the chimps’ tea party look like an evening out with the Galloping Gourmet.

The wife’s mother sat glaring at the groom’s family like a bucolic ferret. The father-in-law was sat holding her hand; if he’d let go she’d have killed him. Poor devil,
he’s frightened to death of her! It’s been so long since he opened his mouth, his tonsils blink at the light. He’s as bald as a badger – he has to sprinkle his pillow with
sand to stop his head sliding off.

The wife’s youngest sister was there too. She’s so bandy she irons her drawers over a boomerang. And talk about thin, when she turns sideways with her tongue out she looks like a
zip. She caught measles when she was a kid and there was only room for one spot.

The wife’s brother was present, drunk as usual, but he was enjoying himself. I could see that from the way he was lay. I’ve never met anyone so bone-idle. He’s the only man I
know who gets a pension for bedsores. He used to be a bricklayer. Nobody knows how long he’s been out of work, but the last wall he built was Hadrian’s. He staggered over and asked me
to lend him a fiver. I told him I’d only got £4 and he said, that’s fine, you can owe me one.

The mother put a record on the radiogram and we started dancing. It didn’t last long; you can’t dance for long to ‘The Laughing Policeman’.

Neither side of the family talked to the other; our side sat down on one side of the room and their lot sat down on the other. It looked like the start of a tag-wrestling match.

The bridegroom’s father was a bit peculiar – he said he trained donkeys for 6p a lesson. I asked him, ‘What do you do first with a wild donkey?’ He said, ‘Hit it
over the head with a 9 foot 6 inch thick plank.’

‘What for?’ I asked.

‘That’s lesson number one, first gets it’s attention.’

He was strong.

Not looked it – smelt it.

He had so many bullets in him, they didn’t give him a military funeral, they weighed him in.

The population explosion

Everybody keeps saying that there are too many people in the world. The trouble with the population explosion is that it’s such fun lighting the fuse. More twins are
being born than ever before because kids are scared coming into the world alone.

I knew a man called Alfred Knucklebottom who had a walrus farm in Skegness. His wife was a traffic warden who’d lost her lip in an avalanche. They’d been married ten years and had
nine kids – they would have had ten but Alfred had been locked in a cupboard for a fortnight. A year later, after a coach trip to Cromer, his wife gave birth to two sets of quins. Alfred was
coming out of the hospital when the vicar saw him. He said, ‘Ah! I hear that the Lord has smiled on you again.’

Alf said, ‘Smiled? He’s had a bloody good laugh!’

I have a friend who’s a lion tamer.

He used to be a teacher until he lost his nerve …

It’s a family affair

My little lad was saying his prayers last night. Halfway through them he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘And please God send me a big red fire engine price £2
from Johnson’s Toy Shop!’

I said, ‘There’s no need to shout, son. God isn’t deaf.’

He said, ‘I know, but Mother is.’

Children. Where would we be without them? It’s a well-known fact that if your parents didn’t have children neither will you.

Before our last kiddie was born I said to my daughter, ‘What would you like, a girl or a boy?’

She said, ‘A lickle sister to play wiv and share my dollies wiv and play at house and fings …’

I said to my youngest lad, ‘I suppose you’d like a little brother?’

He said, ‘If it won’t put our mam out of shape too much I’d like a donkey.’

Mind you, their inherent honesty sometimes embarrasses you. I took my little lad to see my wealthy uncle who’s been ill. He said, ‘Uncle, do me an impression of a frog.’

‘What for?’ said uncle.

He said, ‘Every time I ask dad for money he keeps saying wait till your uncle croaks …’

The only decent thing we had in our house was cheap air-conditioning, until some fool killed the bat.

They tell us parents we should love our kids. We should kiss them before they go to bed at night. But who’s going to stay up until they’ve gone to bed?

You don’t get rougher

There’s a small boy near me who comes from a very tough family – so tough there’s a notice on their gate that reads ‘Beware the Grandma’.
He’s a dirty little kid – the last time he had a bath his mother pulled out the plug and pushed the water down with a poker. He’s never got a handkerchief and the only song he
knows is ‘Greensleeves’.

He’s got a pet, a one-eyed mongrel dog with so many fleas that its tail is an overspill estate. He took it to the Crufts dog show last year. He sat outside and a girl came up with a golden
retriever. The mongrel barked at it and the girl said, ‘Take that disgusting creature away. My Labrador’s just been awarded two firsts in its class, and a highly commended.’

The boy said, ‘That’s nothing, mine’s had two fights, one bitch and he’s highly delighted!’

And they expect us to teach our kids the facts of life. I finally plucked up courage and told my son about the birds and the bees.

When I finished I said, ‘Well, son, you heard what I told you. Now what do you say?”

He said, ‘Not bad, Dad. You got most of it right.’

I said to my doctor, ‘Is it possible for a nine-year-old child to take out an appendix?

He said, ‘No.’

I said to my son, ‘See? Now put it back!’

Never forget...

Old Hamish McQuirtle was a widower and he was in hospital recovering from a major operation. He’d been ill for over four months and his three sons hadn’t brought
him anything: no flowers or grapes, nothing at all. Finally he sent for his family and they all stood around his bed. There was his eldest son Albert – he was so mean he took long steps to
make his shoes last longer. His next son, Dermot, was the same: a wealthy fish manure wholesaler from Perth, he once found a crutch and not wanting to waste it, he broke his wife’s leg.

McQuirtle’s youngest son, Rory, was just as mean – he’d once broke into a neighbour’s house to gas himself.

Hamish looked at them: ‘No grapes, no flowers, no papers, no tobacco, ah you mean lot.’

‘Forgive us, dad, it was just forgetfulness.’

‘Aye. I’ll forgive you. We’re all guilty of forgetfulness. For example, I forgot to marry your mother.’

‘Father, do you mean we’re all …?’ they shouted.

Hamish said, ‘Aye, and three bloody cheap ones at that!’

There was a young man from Bombay

Who sailed off to China one day

He was strapped to the tiller

With a sex-starved gorilla

And China’s a bloody long way.

Robin and his Merry Men

They frolic in the sun.

And if you ask, ‘Who’s Maid Marion?’

They answer, ‘Everyone!’

There was an old chap quite absurd

Who thought he could fly like a bird

Watched by thousands of people

He leapt down from a steeple

He was buried on April the third.

There was an old farmer from Greece

Who did terrible things to his geese

But he went too far with a budgerigar

And the parrot phoned the police.

There was an old maid from Genoa

And I blush when I think what Iowa

Now she’s gone to her rest

And it’s all for the best

Otherwise I’d borrow Samoa.

I got up this morning when the sun didn’t shine

I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine

I loaded sixteen tons of number 9 coal

And the foreman said, ‘You bloody fool, you’re on two till ten this week.’

Schubert had a horse called Sarah

He rode her in a big parade

And all the time that the band was playing

Schubert’s Sarah neighed.

When I was a young boy and drove my mother wild

I met a maiden in the wood and she said to me ‘Child,

I’m going to show you a new game, of its fun you’ll soon evince’

I don’t know what it was we played

But cricket’s had it since.

If Communists are equal

Perhaps it would be fun

To ask why Stalin had so much hair

And poor old Khrushchev none.

Oh how I miss my ma-in-law

Sometimes it has me scared

That I will go on missing her

Until I get my rifle repaired.

A leaf it fell upon my foot

And to move it I was unable

The leaf was made of solid oak

From Auntie Aggie’s table.

A pious young lady called Pond

Of wearing black frilly garters was fond

She said one day, as she knelt down to pray

They’re in memory of those gone Beyond.

There was an old barrow boy from Mill Hill

Who swallowed an atomic pill

They found his barrow way up in Harrow

And his nuts up a tree in Brazil.

There was a young Scotsman called Andy

Who went into a pub for a shandy

As he lifted his kilt

To wipe up what he’d spilt

The barmaid said, ‘Blimey! That’s handy.’

There was an old farmer called Burk

Who pulled up his cart with a jerk

His load of manure was quite insecure

And he was up to his neck in his work.

My dear wife swallowed a pocket watch

T’was only the other day …

And now she’s taking Epsom Salts

To pass the time away.

She told me it was her thirtieth birthday so I put thirty candles on her cake – arranged in the shape of a question mark.

I said to the wife, ‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke in bed.’

She said, ‘But a lot of women do.’

I said, ‘Not bacon, they don’t.’

They say time heals all wounds, but it caused most of mine.

The wife hit me with an alarm clock.

We’ve been married ten years now – a decade – and, believe me, she has decayed.

On the plane

If brains were elastic, my wife wouldn’t have enough for a flea’s truss. I asked her once what she thought of apartheid. She said, ‘I’m not sure but I
think the pill’s safer.’ She honestly thought the film Ben Hur was about a sex change Scotsman. God knows when she last read a newspaper but she still goes to sleep in an air
raid shelter.

Last year I talked her into going to Madeira for our annual holiday. She didn’t want to go because she didn’t fancy eating cake for a fortnight. We went on a cheap excursion flight.
The plane was an early jet – a bag of charcoal and an oven. The pilot had a word with us – you could tell he was the pilot because his cap was back to front and he had goggles on. He
said, ‘I’m sorry to say the wings have fallen off and the propellers rotted.’

The wife turned to me and said, ‘Well, now are you satisfied? We’ll be up here all night!’

I said to my wife, ‘Treasure’ – I always call her Treasure, she reminds me of something that’s just been dug up.

Table manners

I took the wife to a restaurant last night. I said to the waiter, ‘Do you serve crabs?’

He looked at the wife and said, ‘We serve everybody.’

She did look a mess. She was wearing a white coat, white hat, and she’d put too much mascara on. She looked like an overweight panda with dropsy. I’ve never seen a woman eat so fast
– she sits at the table with her elbows in starting blocks.

The wine waiter said, ‘What would madam like to wash the meal down with?’

I said, ‘I’m not sure but try Lake Windermere.’

I ordered a steak. I said to the waiter, ‘Is it rare?’

He said, ‘Judging by the look of it it’s bloody near extinct.’

Just another day

Take an average day. I woke up at four o’clock this morning. The alarm was going off and a ginger camel was sitting at the dressing table. Straight away I knew something
was wrong – because we never set the alarm for four. The wife was asleep with her mouth wide open. I bent across to kiss her, gently took the snooker cue from behind her ear and ran my finger
down her duelling scar. I got up and put on my smoking jacket. By the time I got downstairs it was on fire – I wasn’t bothered, it’ll come in handy as a blazer.

I said to the chemist, ‘Can I have some sleeping pills for the wife?’

He said, ‘Why?’

I said, ‘She keeps waking up.’

My wife and I don’t believe in not speaking. We have our own special way of facing up to and sorting out our differences – it’s called boxing.

Vengeance

At approximately two-thirty last Tuesday morning, a chilling mist rose from the garden of number 14 Herbal Terrace, Grimethorpe, the home of Ada and Alf Kipperwaithe. Ada was a
hell of a size, a hard-bitten, bad tempered, muscular woman who dominated her skinny little husband, Alf.

That cold morning a burglar broke in the Kipperwaithes’ house and pinched Ada’s silver karate cups and some Goss china from an aunt in Bangor. Alf was on nights at the local Co-op
when the police told him of the theft and that they’d caught the burglar. Alf marched into the police station and said, ‘Where’s the man who broke into my house?’

The desk sergeant paled at the menace in the little man’s voice. Alf pushed him to one side, strode into the cells and grabbed a fellow through the bars and snarled, ‘Are you the man
who broke into my house while my dear wife was asleep?’

The burglar broke down. ‘Don’t hit me! Revenge isn’t any good!’

‘Leave that for the police,’ said Alf. ‘Here’s £10, there’s something you’ve got to tell me, and tell me now: how the hell did you get in without waking
the wife up?’

My wife’s got that classical look – she looks like Beethoven.

They say you should always smile when you’re poor. It’s perfectly true. They’ve just rushed the wife to hospital, delirious with laughter.

I found the wife’s school report the other day. No wonder she’d hidden it. The teacher had written: ‘All I can say of this girl is I’m sorry they abolished
the death penalty.’

She has a fear that one night in a dark street a sex maniac will jump out and ignore her.

My wife talks so much, she gets lip cramp.

People who know I’m henpecked say, ‘Are you a man or a mouse?’

Well, I must be a man because the wife’s frightened of mice.

‘I never made love to my wife before I was married. Did you?’

‘I don’t know. What was her maiden name?’

We had a goose for Christmas last year. The wife said, ‘It’s took me two days to cook it.’

I asked, ‘Why?’

She said, ‘Well it screams when you pull its feathers out.’

From fear, fortitude

The Tzar of Russia was so frightened when he saw Napoleon that the shock made him work harder for his country and, through his labour, he laid the foundation stone of the great
modern Russia.

George Washington was so scared when he first looked at a Red Indian savage that his fear welded together the settlers to make America powerful and rich.

Bearing this fear in mind I did something yesterday that’s bound to put this country back on its feet – I sent the Prime Minister a photograph of the wife. What a face! She’s
been on the Ten-Day Beauty Plan for five years …

She’s had her face lifted so often she talks through her naval.

Ours is a football marriage, we keep waiting for the other one to kick off.

She once licked my cheek. I asked, ‘Do you love me?’

She replied, ‘No, I need the salt.’

I said, ‘I could live in your eyes.’

She said, ‘You’d be at home, there’s a sty in one of them.’

She was born under Taurus the Bull and it trod on her …

My wife’s getting better at driving now.

It’s got to the stage where the road begins to turn at the same place as she does.

She said, ‘Will you love me when I’m old and baggy?’

I said, ‘Why worry about tomorrow?’

You should see her in a see-through nightie – like a side of bacon in deep freeze.

My wife spends money like water.

Trouble is, I only earn it like treacle.

I’m not saying the wife’s ugly, but last Christmas she stood under the mistletoe waiting for someone to kiss her … and she was still there at Lent.

My wife sent her photograph to the Lonely Hearts Club.

They sent it back saying they weren’t that lonely.

She went to the pictures to see Dracula – the audience thought she was making a personal appearance.

My wife is 38-26-38. That’s only her neck.

She’s so bald that when she goes to a bowling alley, people put their fingers up her nose.

The wife threw coffee on the floor.

That’s grounds for divorce.

She’s so cross eyed that when she cries tears run down her back.

Her teeth stick out so much it looks as if her nose is playing a piano.

She’s got a complexion like a peach – yellow and fuzzy.

My wife has said that she’s fed up with so much sex on the telly. The trouble is, she keeps getting the aerial wire tangled round her legs … it’d be worse if we
had an indoor aerial …

And she’s got so many double chins it looks as though she’s leaning her head on a pile of crumpets.

You might not know this, but I started my career singing in the streets.

I was so bad they threw me into the nearest theatre.

I’m not in very good shape. I used to have broad shoulders and a deep chest – but that’s all behind me now. I went to give a pint of blood last week. They pumped
for an hour then settled for a gill.

Thank you for that sparse ripple of enthusiasm when I came on. I’m grateful because last week at the El Tropicana Club in Goole, the silence
that greeted my act was so intense that the mere shifting of a wine gum from one tooth to another reverberated like a musket volley.

Beethoven’s eldest brother...

I had intended to commence my pianoforte recital by playing you a little something of Mozart’s – but I won’t, because he never plays any of mine. Then I toyed
with the idea of playing a snatch from Ravel’s ‘Pavane pour une infante défunte’, but the only trouble is I can’t remember now if it is a tune or a Latin prescription
for chilblains. So instead I’d like to play a beautiful composition written by Beethoven’s eldest brother Syd, who wrote it as he lay dying after an accident at the St Alban’s
fish festival.

People often ask me how I manage to keep so jolly and full of zip – it isn’t always easy.

The mother-in-law lives with us, you know. She came about three weeks ago – I remember the day well because next door’s savage Alsatian was whimpering.

Anyway, I awoke, did my morning exercises – up, one, two, three. Down, one, two, three. Then my other eyelid. I kissed the wife gently on her black eye patch, she stirred and for one
dreadful moment, with her having no teeth in, it was like peering down the open end of a damp euphonium. It’s hard to describe the wife first thing in the morning, but a fortnight ago she
undressed without drawing the bedroom curtains and a peeping Tom across the road gave himself up. She tries so hard to be beautiful; she’s had her face lifted so often that in the future
they’ll have to lower her body. She’s not got a bad figure, except when she wears a mini-skirt she looks like a badly chipped drop leaf table.

I’ve tried hard to get on … pubs, clubs, theatres, they’re all excellent sources of unemployment to me.

I can’t manage. I’m so far behind with the mortgage repayments that the arrears are written in Latin.

Insects

I once played in a place called the Tropicana club, Scunthorpe. It was under a viaduct in the attic of a blouse factory. They had a bouncer on the door throwing drunks in. What
an audience! If they liked your act they didn’t clap, they let you live.

The digs I had were the worst I’d never been in. The landlady must have come from North Wales – at least, she had a face like flint. The house was filthy – the windows were
cleaned with a Brillo Pad and the carpets were so dirty the beetles walked across them on stilts. The landlady’s husband once hung his stocking up at Christmas and the tree died.

The first day I was there I asked where the toilet was – the landlady said it was outside in the garden. I went down a weed-choked path full of nettles and groundsel. The toilet was a
horror – flies, bluebottles, wasps, hornets. I fled back to the house. I said, ‘Dreadful – that toilet is full of ghastly insects!’

She said, ‘You should use it at dinnertime; they’re all in the kitchen then!’

I used to work in a bicarbonate factory – I was a sort of relief worker. It did me till I got wind of something else.

A musical interlude

I’d like to play for you a haunting madrigal that I had the great distinction of presenting recently to the President of the United State … Owned Laundries at the
Friends of the Mafia Hot Pot Supper at the Hide and Skin Works, Wigan.

It was written under tragic circumstances for me by a great friend of mine who wrote it as he lay dying after falling headfirst into a barrel of kosher rum. Then he died.

It’s a haunting tune and whenever I play it I think of her – my first love – and the last time we met in that dimly lit Hungarian gypsy restaurant in Crewe. I remember we were
holding hands under the table – it took some doing, it was fourteen foot long. We hadn’t enjoyed the meal, in fact I sent the caviar back twice because it smelt fishy. By the light of a
candle on the table I saw my beloved’s lips trembling. I bent across to kiss them, she snatched her head away angrily and it took fifteen minutes to get the wick from up my nose. She left and
I never saw her again. I’ve often wondered what happened to Gladys Cottersbotham …

It’s a funny name, but you can’t always judge things by names. Where we live all the houses have names. There’s one across the road that’s called ‘La Casa
Romantica’ – it’s a two up two down and the drains are blocked. What a family! I met the dad the other day. He was out with so many kids! I said to him, ‘If you have another
youngster you’ll have a football team.’

He said, ‘I’ve got a football team, these are the reserves.’

I’ve only been in their house once. There were so many wet nappies in the kitchen there was a rainbow in the lobby.

Some of the neighbours put on airs and graces. One house on our side is called ‘The Heights’. It’s about a foot higher than ours – it was built on a tip. They never have
Cream Crackers at their house, always Crème de Crackeur. His wife won at bingo last week. She didn’t shout ‘House!’, she stood up, waved her gloves and shouted
‘Maisonette!’ The wife’s calling our house ‘Sonata’, because with the cost of living nowadays we’ll soon be doing a Moonlight.

When I auditioned for Bernard Delfont his cigar ash burned my neck. He couldn’t help it, I was kissing his feet at the time.

If success breeds success, then I must be on the pill.

For two years I toured with the Sadler Wells Ballet Company – I was the van driver.

I nearly didn’t make it. My brother swallowed a live bullet. The doctor gave him a quart of castor oil. Dangerous? Only if you point him at anybody.

I had three setbacks this week – stereo, TV, radio.

Some say he’s the funniest man in the country … I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been to Peru.

Unemployment is terrible where I live. The local paper had an advert for a nightclub croupier – first in the queue was the vicar.

Making friends and meeting people

I’m always happy when I’m making friends and meeting people. Meeting people, that’s what life’s all about. I was in my local pub the other night.
It’s called The Dumb Fortnight because the beer’s two weak for words. I said to the landlord, ‘This beer’s flat, warm and full of sediment.’

He said, ‘You’re lucky. You’ve only got a pint of it. I’ve got a bloody cellar full.’

At the back stood a chap on his own playing darts. A little fellow came in and stood next to him.

‘Don’t I know you?’ the fellow said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’ll come to me,’ said the first chap. ‘I’ve got it! We sheltered in an Alpine hut to escape an avalanche on the Matterhorn.’

The big fellow said no.

‘Got it! We used to go shark fishing together off the Great Barrier Reef with a nymphomaniac pearl diver. She ran off with a Mexican evangelist and lost her knee cap in a bakery
fire.’

The big fellow said no.

The little bloke said, ‘It’ll come to me … Wait a minute. We escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Upper Silesia. We were disguised as German barbers and we blew up a troop
train with a hand grenade made to look like a rissole. We got into Holland and hid in a shed full of tulips until the war was over …’

The big man said no.

‘Was you in here last night?’ said the little bloke.

‘Yes.’

‘Well that’s where I’ve seen you.’

When I started I was the only comic to have been thrown out of places I hadn’t even worked at.

At one time he had ambitions to be a sex maniac – but he failed his practical.

There was a big fire at our local income tax office last night but they put the blaze out before any serious good was done.

Have you seen the new tax form? It’s very simple, just two questions:

(A) How much do you earn?

(B) Send it.

I’m still so poor, if I wrote a blank cheque it would bounce.

I was playing piano. Someone shouted, ‘Get him off!’

The manager shouted, ‘No, he’s ‘armless!’

I heard somebody say, ‘That’s what he ought to be …’

I’ve died more times than James Cagney ever did.

I’ve not always been a comedian. There was a time when I had regular meals.

My suit’s so thin moths use it as a diet sheet.

When it comes to humour, people often ask me, ‘What’s the difference between a northern audience and a southern audience?’
Frankly, as far as I’m concerned there’s no difference – they don’t laugh at me in the south either. The reason I work for Yorkshire TV is that they’re so good to me.
They can never do enough for me – so they don’t bother trying …

I’ve been on the dole so often, whenever they build a new labour exchange they call me in as a consultant.

When I write a letter to the income tax people, I always drink a bottle of scotch – after all two heads are better than one.

Money

Speaking of money, it’s not been a happy time for me. I received a final demand from the tax man last week. I could tell I owed a lot because on the front of the envelope
was written Chapter One … I’m also behind with my mortgage repayments – well, I must be ’cos the Building Society is holding the wife hostage.

I went to see the bank manager to try and get a loan. I said, ‘How does my account stand?’

He said, ‘I’ll toss you for it.’

We sat down in his office. He said, ‘Mr Dawson, have you got any collateral?’

I said, ‘No, it’s just the way my legs are crossed.’

He said, ‘You’ve been coming to this bank now for seven years and you’ve never noticed that I’ve got a glass eye.’

I said, ‘It’s your left one.’

He said, ‘How did you know?’

I said, ‘It’s the only one with a spark of humanity in it.’

The trouble these days is you just don’t get value for your money. I went to a West End tailor for a suit. I said, ‘What can I have for twenty-five pounds?’

He gave me some wool and a loom.

I bought a second-hand car last year. The salesman said, ‘You’ll get a lot of pleasure out of it.’ And he was right – it’s a pleasure to get out of it. I
don’t know how old it is but you have to start it with a whip. It must be the only car on the road with thatched tyres.

I was in show business for years. Fortunately now I’m making a living.

I stayed at the Fiddle Hotel – what a vile-inn …

I was in a play on the TV once. It was one of those suspense plays. It kept you wondering … what’s on the other channels?

Always on the go

One of the moving stories I ever heard was in a senna pod factory. I was a foreman on the conveyor belt and I was always on the go. One night I got invited to a Scrabble party
at a teetotallers’ coming of age. I was halfway through a carrot cocktail (they’re very good: you still get drunk but you see better) when there was a knock at the door. I went with my
hostess to open it, and stood on the doorstep was an old tramp. He said, ‘Missus, last week you gave me a waistcoat and in the pocket I found two £5 notes.’

She said, ‘You honest man! You’ve brought the money back!’

He said, ‘No, I’ve come for another waistcoat!’

People say to me, ‘Cheer up! Lady Luck will smile on you one day.’ By the time she smiles on me she won’t have any teeth left.

Comedians run in my family – they have to.

Good fortune has passed me by so many times that I walk along the road giving a slow down signal.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here – If I was a liar I could.

Whatever I earn is going towards a worthy cause, and that is to send my wife and her mother to the country … India, Burma, Tibet … anywhere will do.

Master criminal

When I was a Detective Inspector in the Dorset CID I found myself up against a master criminal who called himself, oh, what was it? Let me see, he was brown and sounded like a
bell … Ah, yes, that was his name: Dung. He used to lurk in a thicket and jump out on women and make love to them while singing ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm’.

We knew he had one weakness – a fondness for roast pork and curried prunes.

One night, disguised as a Turkish knife-grinder’s concubine and with a pig under each arm, I set out to trap the fiend. Halfway across a field I met a farmer’s daughter called Daisy
– so named because she grew wild in the woods.

‘Oi’ll walk with ’e in case ’e get attacked,’ I said.

‘Wait a mo, you might attack me!’

‘How could I attack you with two pigs under my arms?’

‘Easy, if I was to hold them for you.’

I used to be known as 003 – licensed to strangle hernias.

Good evening. First of all, let me thank you for the wonderful reception you gave me this evening. Not only for the one just now but for the one you gave me earlier outside
when I was busking the queue.

What amazes me is that so many people think show business is glamorous and exciting. Believe me, it’s about as glamorous as changing the sheets in a bed-wetting
clinic.

Did you hear about the TV executive who made a marvellous speech to his staff about having an economy drive? It was so effective they gave him two cheers.

I was a spy in the Bank of England – I was a mint spy.

People keep away from me. I’m tough, fast with a gun and I’ve got BO.

In fact I was born with a shotgun on my knee. Hell of a job to put my trousers on.

I’m about as well known as Lord Godiva.

I’m good at karate – I once broke a plank with my head – just like that, concussion.

And the women – Raquel Welch, Bridget Bardot, Gladys Alcock – that’s the one I went out with.

I went to my doctor and asked for something for persistent wind. He gave me a kite.

Went to my office the other day and a nut fell on my head. I thought, ‘Nice one, squirrel.’

A lot of people believe that show business consists of all-night parties and sex orgies. Well, the nearest I’ve got to an orgy was when the au pair’s garter snapped at
Scrabble.

Spinning Margaret

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I didn’t expect thunderous applause when my name was announced – and I wasn’t far wrong, either. I’m not surprised.
My Great Aunt Margaret, just before she passed away at the ripe old age of ninety-eight, beckoned me to her side and whispered, ‘Nephew, if you ever fail to get a laugh as a comedian
I’ll turn over in my grave.’

I attended a séance in Birmingham recently, the medium went into a deep trance and said, ‘I don’t know who this message is for, but I’m getting a very strange message
through from somebody called Spinning Margaret …’

She was the last of the Gaiety Girls in Edwardian London; men drank Champagne from her slipper and threw roses at her as she danced. She was fifty-nine when she retired, with damp feet and
greenfly.

Despite her foreboding I’m doing pretty well. I’m booked here tonight; I’ve a booking for next August – and one for the following March. Trouble is, they’re not
just engagements, to me that’s a career. People keep saying, ‘Don’t worry, Les. Success is just around the corner!’ Which is not very encouraging as I live on the M1.

Fortunately, I don’t rely on doing this sort of thing for a living. I’m only doing it so I can purchase a few luxuries for my family at Christmas … just little luxuries like
bread and cheese …

If I ever get worried I do like they say in the song, ‘Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worries on the doorstep …’ Our house is the only one in the
street with a doorstep twelve feet high.

I was working at the Copacabana, Scunthope and this man approached me after the show. He said, ‘I were watching your act from behind the
snooker table. Are you approachable?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Can I give you a word of constructive criticism?’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ He said, ‘I
think you’re crap.’

I may look overweight but my doctor assures me that for my age I’m exactly the right weight – though I should be twelve inches taller. So he put me on a diet. I can eat anything I
want – bread, potatoes, cakes, anything. But I mustn’t swallow it.

‘Since his last appearance on this show we’ve received two thousand letters asking him to come back … and any man who can afford two thousand stamps deserves
to come back …’

Thanks to Louise Dixon, George Maudsley, Madeleine Ovenden, Ed Lomas, Greg Stevenson and Ron Callow for all their help in editing illustrating and designing this book.