ego.istic.org

Knowing a good joke that you haven't told yet is like having money burning a hole in your pocket: you don't want to spend it at the wrong moment, without the right set-up, but OTOH it gives you a kind of nervous excitement, and you just want rid of it.

Another thing it's like is having a crush on someone. This secret feeling inside you is so amazing you just have to share it with everyone, but at the same time you don't want to look a fool, so you keep it with you all the time, waiting for the right moment. Maybe eventually you find a quiet corner, just you and the object of your affection, and you find the words to blurt it out. It could go well, leaving you on top of the world; it could go badly, leaving you looking like a fool; either way, you only get one shot. Maybe you keep on bottling it, or the opportunity never arises, until it is too late: the one you seek has gone away. Then, slowly, you might forget, only bringing your love to mind on a cold winter night once in a while, or your need might go on eating you up, driving you to madness. You might court others in short, perfunctory affairs, but they are no substitute for the one you have longed for all this time.

In the first series of Round the Horne, in the 16th episode, Kenneth Horne says what is for me the most memorable and perhaps the funniest gag of both Round the Horne and his earlier series Beyond our Ken, and of all the Much Binding in the Marsh I have heard. This was June, 1965, and what winds me up inside is that there will never come another opportunity to tell this joke. I walk around in an almost ecstatic state of merriment at the simple fact that I know this joke and the people around me do not. Even writing this post, the tingly expectation of the punchline I know is coming threatens to make me collapse into giggles. But like a secret love, I just have to reveal it, so here it is.

This is the part of the show for the trendy, with-it pacesetters: the people who dig the Kinks, and consider themselves far out. If you don't dig the Kinks and think they're merely a lot of pimply, adolescent scruffs, then you're not far out.