THE LIFE OF A JOKE.

Shannon News, 21 March 1924, Page 4

THE LIFE OF A JOKE.

Somebody once said that there were only ten jokes in the world, and that all the others were variations upon these. While this may not be quite the case, there is no doubt that a great number of jokes travel a long way before they die. I am by profession a joke-maker, and it is in the course of my work that I have had the onpurtunity of studying the life of a joke (writes “A Humorist” in a London paper). About’ seven months ago I perpetrated a joke which, in all modesty, I claim was fairly good. This, joke, newly born and absolutely original, made its first appearance in the pages of a well-known weekly.

Within a fortnight I saw that joke reprinted, occasionally with, but more often without, acknowledgments in no fewer than eleven different provincial papersjand within another week I saw it again in another sot of provincial newspapers, this time without acknowledgment from any one of them. About six weeks later the same joke was reprinted, with due acknowledgments, in a well-known American humorous periodical, and it was immediately snapped tip by countless papers throughout the United States and Canada. , Some jokes are essentially national in character; particularly those depending on dialect or on ~a. play upon words. This joke was not like that. It was, without reserve, an international joke. Thus it was that two months ago a friend of mine returned from Germany and brought with him a current copy of a German humorous weekly in which my joke has been awarded the honour of a full-page illustration. Last month the same honour was accorded it in a well-established French periodical. A few nights ago I went to a music hall, and one of the “turns,” a raconteur, told several jokes which were far from new to me, and I was not surprised when my own joke followed these to find that it was received with laughter and applause. Last might I was at a dinner party, at which the man seated opposite to •me at table told my joke with great jokes.” success. When tl\e laughter had died daftm the lady on my left said to me, “I wonder who thinks of all these “I wonder,” said I.