JUST TO SHARPEN UP ITS COMEDIANS’ WITS!

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1934, Page 15 (Supplement)

JUST TO SHARPEN UP ITS COMEDIANS’ WITS!

8.8. C. Establishing Library Of "Gags”-—All Vintages

T'HE British Broadcasting Corporax tion is about to become the biggest joke in the world. Of its own free will! The entire light entertainment department is to devote its energies to collecting the most comprehensive library of “gags” old and new, professional and amateur, known to man (writes Collie Knox in the “Daily Mail”). “Gag.” ■ See dictionary . . . described as “specially powerful aid to horse breaking.” For horse substitute “rib.” For it is the avowed object of the 8.8. C. to make listeners laugh regardless of expense and physical injury. Broadcasting House now boasts possession of the biggest gramophone record and music library extant. It is believed that the “gag” library when completed will give its rivals the laugh. The jokes of the world will be gathered together and carefully filed. No one will be safe. The “man in the street” who has cracked a joke In the street will hear it broadcast. . . for all unaware, he will have been standing next to a haggard 8.8. C. gag sleuth-hound! No gag of any kind will be cracked in a book, a film, a theatrical production, by an after-dinner speaker, or any member of the great army of unconscious humorists that will not be—as Shakespeare has it—“set in a notebook, learned and conned by rote to cast into our teeth.” When a radio production is to be written, or a comedian is stuck for the exact joke to fit a situation, the Director of Variety will dash off to the gag library. He will pull out card indexes labelled— Marital satire Divorce Cruelty • •" Cynicisms He will then hand the comedian on a plate a card bearing the words: — “Who was that lady you were with yesterday?” “That wasn’t a lady. That was my wife.” Mother-in-law jokes, jokes about kippers, cheese, Aberdonians, Irishmen, policemen, betting, rodents of all species, and 8.8. C. announcers will be docketed and filed away in bulging shelves.

Once a gag is used in a radio production it will be noted down like a book taken out of a library. When used over the air it will be replaced and a mark will be put on it, as for instance: “Aunt joke. Used by Flossie Twoshoes. October, 8, 1934. Not be be used again until 1936.” I can claim to have been in the at birth of this astonishing scheme, which should make our radio hours one long burst of hilarity. When I was standing in the office of the Variety Director, the floor

of which was already covered with jokes of all nations, Ashley Sterne burst into the room.

“Terrible about Sopwith and the Endeavour; isn’t it? Ah, well it is better to have luffed and lost than never to have luffed at all.” Instantly there was a wild dash for the gag reference book. “Take that down,” screamed the Variety Director. “File it. under Yachting, Losing, Sportsmanship, Salt, and Relations with America.”

It is the firm intention of the 8.8. C. to erect a library of gags that will be incapable of entry except by the use of a password. The reception officials in the hall are to have strict orders not to admit anyone who looks like a gag-crash-ing comedian, a film producer, or a theatrical manager. The 8.8. C. entertainment staff is destined to live in a condition of permanent hysteria for many months to come. , The gag library will take up a vast amount of space. Broadcasting House is already much too small. ' . Which is really the biggest joke of all.