The confounded parrot
Jimmy from Liverpool spins a yarn about a conjurer and his talkative prop
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Right, there's a magician on a boat going to the Carribean, and he sees a parrot going for a hundred dollars. And he thinks, 'Right that could do for my act, so he buys the parrot for a hundred dollars. And he takes it back.
So he's on the show and he goes 'I'm going to pull a rabbit out of my hat right now' and the parrot says 'It's in his sleeve! It's in his sleeve!' and he turns to the parrot and says 'If you do that again I'm going to strangle you'.
So the show goes on, and he's about to cut a woman in half. The parrot turns around and goes 'There's two women in the box! There's two women in the box!' ... and the magician says 'Right', and as he's strangling the parrot, the boat hits an iceberg and sinks.
So, moments later, the magician reappears on a raft, and the parrot flies up to him and says 'Go on then, how did you make the ship disappear?!'
Marie says
This is a narrative joke told by Jimmy a young man in his 20s, with great fluency. Like many jokes it plays on dualities - here ,between illusion and reality.
It's a good example of a common joke type where humans and performing animals come up against competing goals and logics, and the punch line exploits their different goals and different realities very well. It's a zany, colourful joke that triggers the comic imagination.
Content last updated: 30/05/2007
