Why/How did the…..cross the road? Jokes

Why did the cow cross the road?
A: Because the farmer drove her.

How did the German U-boat captain cross the road?
A: He used the subway, of course!

Why did the ravenous lion cross the road?
A: Because he saw the zebra crossing.

Why did the hedgehog cross the road?
A: Because the chicken was fowl company.

Why did the mountaineer cross the road?
A: Because it was there.

How did the snail cross the road?
A: Very, very slowly.

Why did’t the dolphin cross the road?
A: He couldn’t see any porpoise in it.

Why did the Roman Catholic priest cross the road?
A: To exorcise the demon drivers.

Why did Bobby Ewing cross the road?
A: He didn’t, it was all a dream.

Why did the refrigerator salesman cross the road?
A: Smeg knows.

Why did the frog cross the road?
A: He was toad to.

Why did the medium cross the road?
A: To reach the other side.

Why did the illiterate road painter cross the road?
A: Because he couldn’t sign his name.

__________________________________________________________________________

Copyright John Steele, 1990, 2011
Two or so of these were used as fillers in my self-published community magazine, The Bentilean, Issue 2, December 1990, which is why I can vaguely remember when I wrote them. I have updated a couple of them here as the originals were a bit un-PC. The “illiterate road painter” was, I admit, originally “Irish” (sorry about that), and the “refrigerator salesman” one was originally “Why did the woman cross the road? A: Who knows”, which I thought was a bit un-PC but also thought that the punchline would be stronger if it was “A: Fuck knows”. And then I thought that some might find that offensive and so changed it to “A: Smeg knows” and that led me to think ‘I could replace “woman” with “refrigerator salesman” — voila! a politically correct version that’s not noticeably less funny that the original version.
I also wrote another one, “Why did the marijuana addict cross the road? A: Because someone told him it was a short cut”, but as someone’s who’s too boring to have ever taken drugs, I have no idea if that joke even makes sense, so didn’t include it above.

Mortimer & Mears Extra

(Mears is onstage and Mortimer enters gyrating
his body and singing silently to himself.)

Mears: What are you doing?

Mortimer: What do you mean?

Mears: Gyrating your body like that. You could bend something vital doing that.

Mortimer: Ah, well, you see, I’ve just been to see this marvellous new play at the Old “I’ve been round here fourteen times and I still can’t find my way out!” Theatre, called “Good Golly, They’re Going to Knock My House Down!” by Rob’s Aten.

Mears: Rob Eaton!

Mortimer: That’s what I said, he’s aten.

Mears: Good was it?

Mortimer: I just told you that, “Good Golly, They’re Going to Knock My House Down!”. I just told you that! I do wish you’d pay attention, you know.

Mears: No, I mean you enjoyed it?

Mortimer: We both did.

Mears: Both?

Mortimer: Me and Gladys.

Mears: Gladys? The Gladys? Your fan?

Mortimer: That’s the one! I took her for services rendered.

Mears: Please! This is a family mag.

Mortimer: Hey? I don’t understand that remark.

Mears: Oh.

Mortimer: No, I took her for all those letters she’s written — in various handwritings — saying how good we are. Well, mainly how good I am, cause she doesn’t like to lie, you see.

Mears: I see.

Mortimer: Good seats we had an’ all. None of you balcony rubbish. No, front row, central to the band, and an entire table to ourselves.

Mears: A table?! In a theatre?

Mortimer: Ah! Theatre in the round. More intimate. They like to involve the audience, and, as it was mainly set in this Working Person’s Club — we’re not sexist..

Mears: Aren’t we?!

Mortimer: No. Only when there’s a cheap laugh to be had. Anyways, as I was saying, they like to involve the audience (cheaper than extras) and they had replaced all the front row seats with bar-room tables.

Mears: But what has all this to do with your coming on dancing?

Mortimer: Rock n Roll.

Mears: Rock n Roll?!

Mortimer: Don’t mind if I do. (He gyrates again)

Mears: I’m warning you, you’ll ruin your girdle!

Mortimer: I’m not wearing it…one…ever. (You’re going to ruin my macho image you are. Hundreds of women out there think of me as their pocket Hercules. You’re going to disillusion them and ruin their thinggy lives.)

Mears: Thinggy lives?

Mortimer: Ah, well, as you said this is a family mag.

Mears: And what’s all this about ‘hundreds’?

Mortimer: Well, dozens then.

Mears: Dozens?

Mortimer: Dozen?

Mears: Try ‘Gladys’.

Mortimer: There’s no answer to that!

Mears: And you got up and danced at this show, did you?

Mortimer: Both of us. Cleared the floor we did.

Mears: Good were you?

Mortimer: Ah, well, truth to tell it had more to do with Gladys than me.

Mears: She was good?

Mortimer: No, but she makes you look like Twiggy! A double-hunchfront!! Turned quickly, doing the Twist, and half the front row lost their programmes! Went flying they did. One even hit the show’s producer, none other than Brian Sugarpuff!!

Mears: Sugar-man

Mortimer: Then why-O-why does he spend all his time in the wardrobe department, trying on all those ladies’ dresses. Tell me that, if you can.

Mears: Moving right along now, you haven’t explained yet why you came on dancing like that. It’s alright saying you were dancing last night, but why are you dancing now?

Mortimer: Well, as I was sitting there with my free plastic glass of cold tea (Mears: Cold tea? — Theatrical beer — pretend!) — and I thought to myself what this show needs is some modern music.

Mears: Modern music?! In a magazine?!!

Mortimer: That’s right: Rock n Scroll! Because every issue we end our show either by being chucked off by the editor — despite the photo of him and that…erm….

Mears: From Berryhill High?

Mortimer: That’s the one! — or by singing Morecambe & Wise’s greatest hit, “Bring Me Sunshine”, and I thought it was about time we updated our approach for a younger, more with-it audience.

Mears: You mean Gladys’s daughter, Beryl?

Mortimer: Double our audience figures in one stroke.

Editor: You’d better hurry up then, you’re running out of space.

Mears: He’s given himself a box now!!

Mortimer: Editors! Power mad, the lot of them.

Mears: Well, you heard him, get gyrating again.

…..and a one, two, three, four…

Mortimer:

Bring me sunshine, babe
In your smile, yeah

 

(He stops singing)

Mears: Is that it?

Mortimer: Well, I’ve never had to sing it all the way through before, and I don’t know the words.

Mears: Hopeless, you are. Say goodnight to everybody.

Mortimer: Goodnight, Gladys.

Mears: And Beryl.

Mortimer: I’ll do that later!

__________________________________________________________________________

Copyright John Steele, 1990, 1999, 2011
This was the second Mortimer & Mears script, I self-published in The Bentilean, Issue 2. This one was my own tribute to the musical, “Good Golly, Miss Molly“, by Bob Eaton, that I seen at the New Victoria Theatre the previous year.
Once again the author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Daryl John Farrington in the writing of various bits of this script.

POEM: Oh, why don’t girls fall over me?

Oh, why don’t girls fall over me?
I asked meself today
I’m almost-strong, almost-charming, almost-handsome
Indeed, almost-perfect in every way
So why don’t girls fall over me
Left ‘n’ right ‘n’ every-which-way?

It can’t possibly be my personality
For that’s bubbly, bright and gay
So why don’t girls fall over me
And run their fingers through my toupee?

Could it, perchance, be the hairy wart I have upon me nose?
Or maybe it’s my armpits, that smell (unlike a rose)?
Or maybe it’s the way I walk: all hunched up and with a limp?
Or the way I eat bananas: with my feet (just like a chimp)?

Ah, but could such things be putting them off
Such a precious – nay, priceless – pearl?
Ah, but maybe (just maybe), the reason could be
The fact that I’m also a girl!

______________________________________________________________

Copyright John Steele 2011
Another typewritten ‘poem’ I’d forgotten about, so probably also written in the ’80s. Why though, I have no idea (well, actually, I used to written humourous stuff to cheer myself up during periods of mild depression, so that’s probably the why). Meanwhile, I can only apologise.

POEM: I Have A Punk Milkwoman

I have a punk milkwoman
Her name is Bertha-Sue
Alas, about delivering milk
She hasn’t a bleeding clue!

One day I shouted after her
That I wanted pasteurized
So she threw a bottle after me
Right past my eyes

But still, she has her hidden depths
That others rarely see
But which I discovered one day
When she revealed herself to me

It was over a low-fat yoghurt
In me little kitchenette
Whilst she was toting up in her book
How much I was in her debt

I was sitting there entranced by her beauty
And her windswept, carelsss pose
And the artistry of her make-up
And the chain, dangling from her nose

I was so overcome by rapture
And the ecstacy of pure bliss
That I pulled the chain towards me
And gave her a passionate kiss

And that’s when she revealed her modesty
‘Cause her cheeks immediately blushed
At least, I think that’s what happened
She may have simply flushed

But then, eschewing all caution
She pulled me to the door
And dragged me up to me bedroom
Where she revealed an awful lot more!

From there our romance quickly blossomed
To the extent that, next Saturday
We’re being married at St. Stephen’s-in-the-Willow
In the church, at quarter to three

And yes, you’re invited to the wedding
To see me say “I Do”
But please, come a little early
‘Cause the christening’s at half-past two.

______________________________________________________________

Copyright John Steele 2011
I’d completely forgotten about this one, when I stumbled across it last night (looking for something else that I didn’t find, of course). Can’t remember exactly when I wrote it but as it was typewritten, I’m guessing it was the 1980s or early ’90′s at the latest. Evidently still in ‘trying to emulate Pam Ayres’ mode at the time. And I’m sorry, but I still love the ‘see it coming a mile off’ joke in verse two.

When I Were A Lad #2

As Robert the Burns once said, “The best laid plans of mice and men go up the spout!”. He should have added, “And a major cause of this is kids!”

Take last month. I get me gran’son all lined up at my feet, take me empty pipe out (cause I don’t smoke), and inflict a long rambling tale on ‘im — for all the long ramblin’ tales my grandad inflicted on me — and, wouldn’t yer be knowing it, come suppertime the little bugger’s back for more!

“Tell us what it was like before they invented intelligent robots, back in 2010a.d.,” he says.

Well, I say, determined to be really rotten this time. Before they invented proper robots, life were really tough. You won’t believe this, but men actually had to work!!

Aye, they were hard days. Yer had to get up at a ridiculously early time in the morning — an’ I don’t mean 10 o’clock either. Nah! We’re talking 7 o’clock, latest!

Aye, cause when I were a lad, you actually had to go to work. Yer couldn’t do it at home, in bed, or anywhere else for that matter. Nope, you had to haul yourself out of bed, dress in special clothing — designed for discomfort, so yer couldn’t fall asleep — and either stand at a metal pole called a “bus stop” (often in the nose-freezing cold) for a big metal box on wheels — which always cam 10 minutes late, if you were early, and 2 minutes early if you were on time — or traipse to work on foot! Or traipse there in a train; or if you were really lucky (i.e. rich), you could drive there in a smaller metal box on wheels that you yourself owned. Cars, they called them.

Mind you, come wintertime — or summer with frost, as I called it — they weren’t as convenient as they sounded. First you had to spend ten minutes sitting behind their steering wheel, trying to get it start with the ‘Choke’, then spend five minutes trying to choke the wheel because it wouldn’t; then phone a special car repair club to come out, look at your engine, nod knowingly, then pour some fuel into its tank, salute sarcastically, and add insult to injury by sending you a demand for money!

Aye times were tough before Saint Maggie liberated us. Unemployment, they called it. But then they never could understand St. Maggie’s Mysterious Ways. It was all part of her Grand Design to phase out work. Well, at least for men. By destroying all the jobs any man would choose to do, leaving only those no self-respecting fellow’d be caught dead doing. Work fit only for the most brainless members of society: the police, the army, editing magazines.

Aye, that soon put men back where they belong: back at home, lying beneath our duvets, being waited on by robots, and contemplating the meaning of Life, the Universe, and those little bits of pink fluff you find in your belly-button.

And let’s not forget that most edifying of past-times: watching the telly. Course! in my day, television wasn’t what it is today. I can remember when there were only three channels to choose from. Aye, you had to make your own entertainment most nights, in them days, I can tell yer!

But then St. Maggie got us a fourth channel. Then four more through cable TV. Then dozens more through satellite television. And now? Now we’ve got so many, you can have four each!! One when yer feel like a laugh, one when yer’d like a singalong-Max Headroom, one when yer fancy a heartrending soap, and Murdoch’s Sky Page Three for when you don’t feel upto using more than one brain cell.

Mind you, all of this has to be paid for — which is where the quiz shows come in. Cause, afterall, you can’t go paying money to idle loafers who use the absence of any jobs not to work. Nah! So part of her Grand Design was to phase out all forms of DSS payments, and encourage the quiz show! Targeting, they called it.

Now, as soon as you’re born, yer name’s shoved down on a quiz show’s waiting list. Cause, you have to keep yer class distinctions. Just cause nobody works anymore (well, nobody worth mentioning), doesn’t mean we’re all equal. Afterall, yer upper classes have been doing nowt for longer than the rest of us, and yer have to recognise that. So now, if you’re upper class, you’re put down for the £Million “Wheel of Fortune” show; if you’re middle class, it’s “That Price is Correct!”; and if you’re as common as what we are, you’ll have a Blankety Blank cheque pen and book and be glad of it!! Which is just the way it should be. St. Maggie said so.

Mind you, the past wasn’t all tough and bad. Phone boxes were proper phone boxes: small, red, and quaint — never worked, but small, red and quaint. Before they started to replace the things to make them more vandalproof. ‘Orrible, grey, pushbutton affairs they were, that took yer money, put you through, let you speak half a sentence then cut you off!! And they wondered why the vandalism increased!

So then they invented the RAMBO phone. Even look at it the wrong way, it’d shout “Don’t push me!!”, and release a smokebomb. Eventually they had to withdraw the things cause every time someone tried ringing the near-east, the middle-east, the far-east, or Russia (Eastern America as is) the stupid things would fill the caller’s chest full of machine gun fire, and blow itself up with a hand grenade!

Then there was that quaint institution, the post office. Ah, but this long rambling tale’s lasted long enough, that’ll have to be another long, ramblin’ tale. Maybe I’ll tell it yer tomorrow, or the day after, or the time they used to take to deliver a second class letter….on second thoughts, I’ll not live that much longer.

__________________________________________________________________________

Copyright John Steele, 1992, 2011
The sequel to “When I Were A Lad”, which I hoped might turn into a bookful but I struggled for ideas and didn’t get round to writing a third one. Still, not to waste it entirely, I self-published it in The Bentilean Mini-Mag Issue 9 (28th August, 1992).

They’re back!….Mortimer & Mears!! (That’s Dick and Sarah)

Mears: Well, here we are, back for another issue.

Mortimer: I told you that photo would work, didn’t I?

Mears: You did, but I didn’t need to use it.

Mortimer: You didn’t need to use it?

Mears: No, he was so overcome by the season of goodwill he was delighted to have us back. On one condition.

Mortimer: One condition? You haven’t got to join a nunnery, have you? Forsake all worldly pleasure and Wogan on the telly?

Mears: No. I’ll give you a hint. (She twirls.)

Mortimer: The costume! I wondered why you were wearing that tea cosy and them-there wellingtons.

Mears: It’s not a tea cosy, it’s my elf-hat.

Mortimer: Your what?!

Mears: My elf-hat. Because this is, or is close to, or just past, the Christmas period, the editor thought it would be a good idea if I dressed up as one of Santa’s helpers.

Mortimer: But why fishnet stockings? And why-O-why is half your dress missing?

Mears: It isn’t. This is all there is. The editor likes me like this. He said I was so good last issue I might end up with a show of my own. What do you think of that?

Mortimer: It’s obvious! he’s after the photo! don’t give it to him. We could end up with half the mag if we play our cards right.

Mears: It’s not true! He’s not after the photo. He’s just spotted my talent, that’s all.

Mortimer: The dirty little devil!! And you let him, I’m shocked!

Mears: Anyway, I think we better get on and tell the ladies and gentlemen…

Mortimer: And Bentilee Volunteers?

Mears: …them too…just what we have for them this issue.

Mortimer: They can all see what you’ve got for them!

Mears: The readers can’t

Mortimer: Gladys can. Very imaginative is my Gladys.

Mears: Filthy, you mean.

Mortimer: That too. We have a very special treat today….only someone who appeared on the Morecambe & Wise shows.

Mears: Good they were. I liked the tall one with glasses.

Mortimer: Ann Hamilton.

Mears: That’s the one! Who is this special guest then?

Mortimer: None other than Horror King, Peter Cushing!!!

Mears: Well, let’s get him on then. Ladies and gentlemen ( Mortimer: And Bentilee Volunteers!), a Big Bentilean welcome for Peter Cushing!

(Enter Peter.)

Peter: Hello, it’s so good to be on your show again, but will you be paying me this time?

{Mortimer: What’s he on about, “again”? And what all this stuff about paying him?}

{Mears: I don’t know. I never said anything about payment.}

Mortimer: Hello there, Peter. We’re a little confused. Neither of us has ever met you before in our lives, and what’s all this about paying you?

Peter: Come over here.

{Peter: I was told you wanted me to act like Peter Cushing,
and that’s all he did when he went on Morecambe & Wise,
ask about his money.

Mears: You mean this isn’t Peter Cushing?

Mortimer: Of course it isn’t! It’s the landlord of the Waggon O Clay Cottage,
pub meals served twice daily.

Peter: Once on Sundays.

Mortimer: I’m sorry to hear that!

Mears: Well he’s no good. You can’t just ask about your money,
people are expecting a comedy routine.

Mortimer: He could sing.

Peter: I can’t sing.

Mears: All the funnier.}

Mortimer: I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, and that fella over there in the pink shirt — very nice madam! ( Mears: He’s not a Bent’ Vol’ is he?) — he’d have to be dressed like that! Apparently, Peter Cushing can’t stay. He’s got to rush off to Wigan to make “Frankenstein Meets the Son of the Grandson of Dracula’s Auntie, Part II”.

Mears Well, goodbye Peter, thanks for coming.

{Mortimer: By the way, you won’t forget about later, will you?
A pint of lager and a packet of pork scratching, and a small Martini
with one of those pink umbrellas and a cherry.

Mears: Funny drink for a man.}

Mortimer: Well, what do we do now?

Mears: As I’m still dressed in this seasonal attire.

Mortimer: Well, almost!

Mears: How about something Christmassy?

Mortimer: Brilliant!!

Mears: What are you doing with your right hand?

Mortimer: Well, you said do something Christmassy.

Mears: Yes….

Mortimer: So I’m giving you my present.

Mears: Mmmmmm…just what I’ve always wanted.

Mortimer: Bring me sunshine…..

__________________________________________________________________________

Copyright John Steele, 1990, 1999, 2011
When I got my hands on a computer with a proper DTP program on it, I suddenly found myself with a lot more empty space to fill up and so used more of my own writings, including two of these Mortimer & Mears scripts. This one is evidently inspired by all those Morecambe & Wise Christmas Shows I seen as a kid, including an appearance by Peter Cushing!
Once again the author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Daryl John Farrington in the writing of various bits of this script.

Welcome to my writing archive…

This is where I shall be archiving my various scribblings, past and present, which I deem anywhere near good enough to want anyone else to read (rather than collecting dust in my house, doing no good to anyone).

There’s my Mortimer & Mears comedy sketches (or blatant Morecambe & Wise rip-offs), poems, short stories, miscellaneous humour, stuff I’d posted to now defunct websites, and eventually there’ll be articles and other stuff too. Meanwhile, more than enough stuff to keep you entertained (I hope!) until I upload some more stuff.