OLD JONES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 136, 30 August 1927, Page 9

OLD JONES

MOTHER-IN-LAW POPULAR THE OTHER MAN’S SHIRT In an interview published in the London “Evening News,” Mr. George Robey, the comedian, said that the type of joke which deals with mothers-in-law or henpecked husbands will always be popular with audiences. He gives as his reason that there is something “human” about jokes of this kind. If I may be allowed to say so, writes John Blunt, in the London “News,” I think he has absolutely hit the nail on the head. The man who laLighs uproariously at music-hall jokes about mothers-in-law and henpecked husbands may very likely be devoted to liis mother-in-law and his wife, but he is, so to speak, his manly independence by his hilarity. It is a profound mistake to suppose that the laughter which is always evoked by what one may call the standard type of joke is ill-natured. On the contrary, it is invariably goodnatured. It is only things for which we really have at heart, affection that we can turn into classic jokes. The idea of the interfering mother-in-law or the nagging wife has just—as far as the average man is concerned—that hint of truth in it which makes the stage exaggeration perennially funny. Moreover, he can always think of other husbands to whom the point would apply more strongly—and there is nothing more mirth-provoking than the mild and harmless misfortunes of one’s friends. I remember that in “Three Men in a Boat” one of the characters is convulsed with laughter at the sight of another man’s shirt falling into the water—convulsed, that is to say, until he finds that it is really his own shirt, when he can’t see any joke at all. Mr. Robey is right: it is the human touch in the old jokes which makes them live. They are not sub.tle, thev are not brilliant, but they have a universal appeal. They touch the abiding sense of humour in the average man just because the average man sees that they do apply faintly to his own case and less faintly to the case of some of his friends. He laughs, one may put it, partly in self-protection and partly in self-congratulation. Really ill-natured jokes seldom survive for long. The English are not savage in their humour, and the very cartoons in our papers do not wound the victims. Indeed, it may truly be said that the figures we most laugh at are popular figures. The unpopular figures are left alone. If most wives really henpecked and if most mothers-in-law were really overbearing they would not be caricatured on the stage; they would be ignored.