Sometime after the War a holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven. When he gets there, God asks this man to tell a Holocaust joke. So he does. God says, That’s not funny. And the survivor says, Well I guess you had to be there. Confronting Holocaust Denial with David Baddiel, BBC 2020
For over 50 years he was a constant presence on Britain’s television screens. A reassuring host, the perfect master of ceremonies, the man whose face was so familiar he felt like the nation’s uncle. But he was also one of our finest stand-up comedians, a performer whose love of words and the crafting of a gag made him the most accomplished comic of his generation. Bob Monkhouse, Master of Laughter, Channel 5 2020
His was a stellar career that including writing comedy for some of the biggest stars in the world, appearing in movies, starring in radio shows, hosting game shows, but more than anything he was a world-class stand-up comedian. ibid.
Jokes were what Bob Monkhouse lived for. He would spend his days writing jokes, his evenings telling jokes … He once worked out he’d written and told well over a million jokes in his career. ibid.
Before long, they [with Denis Goodwin] were performing together too. In the early ’50s Bob and Denis were in such demand to appear in the top radio shows of the time that they set up their own business: the Monkhouse & Goodwin Agency … In 1962 their partnership ended. ibid.
In 1967 he was invited to become host of the biggest entertainment show of the times: The London Palladium Show … That same year Bob learned that ATV had acquired the rights to a hot new game show which had been a huge hit in Germany. The name of the show: The Golden Shot. ibid.
To entice Bob back to ATV the company had agreed that after 12 months he could host a new game show that his management had spotted in America: that show was Celebrity Squares. ibid.
I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke. Julian Clary
You know, the Dutch philosopher and theologian Spinoza who in his Tractorum Tractorus in 1345 posited the theological … what? Have you heard it before? Alexei Sayle’s Stuff s3e3, BBC 1991
Bobby Chariot on tour to booing audience: … I’ve got some jokes about big-nosed Jews … Alexei Sayle’s Merry-Go-Round e5, BBC 1998