A last word from Lenny
Lenny shares his final thoughts about the Joke Booth:
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I think, first of all, I have to say the British public rock. Lots of very funny jokes in the joke booth, but there are also lots of very old fashioned jokes. People are still telling cannibal jokes and Irish jokes, and jokes about the wife, you know, and I was, I was really surprised at that.
I was also surprised at the amount of kids telling incredibly inappropriate jokes, you know, little tiny kids telling jokes about hookers and shagging and stuff like that, and I was just a bit kind of, "What! What is going on?"
Generally, because I don't tell jokes in my act, this whole joke booth thing has been amazing to me anyway, because there's so many jokes, and there's clearly a lot of comics who make a living just from telling jokes. I mean, I started off doing that, but in the eighties I changed, you know, because with the advent of alternative comedy I realised that that's where I needed to be, being more observational rather than telling jokes. But what I've learned from this is that - actually - jokes are great.
There's some great jokes out there. What's green and hard? A frog and a flick-knife. What's pink and wrinkly and hangs out your pyjamas in the morning? Your mum. You know, these are – well, it doesn't work with me because obviously I've got a black mum, so it would have to be what's brown and wrinkly. But you know what I mean. It works, there's some good jokes out there.
And the fascinating thing was the bravery that people have in their telling of a joke, because some people clearly haven't learned the joke, they haven't practised it at all, they don't really know what the timing is. Sometimes they forget salient points that they probably should have remembered. Sometimes they just stop in the middle of the joke and start laughing for no reason. Sometimes, some people go in the joke booth and just talk. It's like they want somewhere to go in for a warm. That surprised me. Unbelievable.
I'm surprised people didn't come in and ask if they could get their nails done, you know, or get a key cut or something because clearly some people didn't quite understand what the joke booth was about. There were a couple of people who were using it to perhaps audition for television producers. I think the guy who tells a joke about the moose is clearly an actor of some kind, and there are a couple of other people who do routines; the Irish guy with the white beard is clearly somebody who fancies himself as a bit of a comic.
But generally I love it. I love the variety of people in the joke booth, I like that it's – I'm surprised that there aren't very many black people telling jokes, but not that surprised because when I first came home and said I'd auditioned for New Faces my mum looked at me like I was an alien. You know, I walked in the room, she said, "Where have you been, you should have been at school today", and she was just about to hit me with a piece of two by four and I said, "I've just done an audition for New Faces." "Audition, doing what?" "Doing my act." "What act?" "I do impressions." "Impressions, what kind of impressions?"
And I had to stand there and do a ten minute set for my mom, and she looked, honest to God, she looked at me like I'd just taken my head off and revealed a small insectoid thing with little antennae. She just didn't understand what I was doing telling jokes. Because, you know, a lot of black people, Jamaicans in particular, when they see me they go, "There's the idiot off the TV. There is the idiot. He hasn't got a blind bit of a sense in 'is 'ead. Don't talk to 'im, he's a h'idiot." So the idea of telling jokes to camera, when you're on your way to work or doing something is like, to a lot of Jamaicans, is a gross injustice, you know: why would you stop me and make me tell a joke to camera? Are you mad? Do you want me to chop you up with me hand? So I'm not surprised by that.
But, you know, a huge variety – a lot of women. A lot of women telling gags, and that's a big change isn't it, because I suppose back in the day, you know, they used to stand behind their husbands' backs and pull faces, but now there's many more women just coming out there telling jokes. Look at that woman with the… that weird woman with the blonde hair who tells a joke about how can you tell if, what tribe a Scotsman's from, you lift his kilt and if he's got a quarter pounder he's a McDonald, you know, and she's very funny. You know.
Woman are funny, there's lots of funny women telling jokes now on the club circuit and on telly and stuff. You've got Jo Brand, you've got Dawn and Jennifer, you've got Sandy Toksvig, you've got Victoria Wood, there's been a great change in the last thirty years as far as gender comedy is concerned. But, as far as it reflects on the general public, I've noticed that – and maybe it's because we were set up in shopping malls, that there were a hell of a lot of women just getting in there and cracking gags and having a laugh. So that's good. So the joke booth was a good thing.








