English Humour for Beginners

by George Mikes

  If all humour is aggressive, sex jokes are the most aggressive of the lot. Gershon Legman, an American, published an 811-page book on the dirty joke.* He regards the sexual joke as thinly disguised aggression. The very first sentence of the Introduction says: ‘Under the mask of humour, our society allows infinite aggression by everyone against everyone.’

  The person who has to listen to sex jokes is often a victim or butt. Compulsive story tellers force their jokes on victims, friends, and members of their own family. Yet, as I have already mentioned, these are the most popular type of jokes, particularly if the humour of scatology is thrown into the same category, as it should be. The teller of sex jokes, says Legman, feels fear or anxiety and by telling his jokes he wishes to expose the listener to the same fear and anxiety.

  Freud put it differently in his Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious:

  ‘The smutty joke is like a denudation of a person of the opposite sex toward whom the joke is directed. Through the utterance of obscene words, the person attacked is forced to picture the parts of the body in question, or the sexual act and shown that the aggressor himself pictures the same thing. There is no doubt that the original motive of the smutty joke was the pleasure of seeing the sexual displayed.’

  As tellers of dirty jokes are mostly men and their so-called victims in most cases are women, Freudians regard sex jokes as verbal rape or, at least, preparation for physical approach.

  Many of the jokes are degrading to women. The dirty joke, according to Freud, is a slightly more sophisticated form of other nasty habits: whispering dirty words to women in the street or writing up four-letter words – usually the name of the female genital organ – on walls.

  Perhaps the significance and the character of all this has changed since Freud’s time. Sex is not less important but it is not the dark and sinister secret it used to be. Most women are ready to acknowledge that they possess sexual organs and the majority would not dream of denying that they lead a normal sex-life, whether they are married or not. And indeed, quite a few charming and educated young ladies use obscene words which make me blush. The war between the sexes goes on, the struggle is eternal; sex can make people desperately unhappy today, just as it could a hundred, two hundred and two thousand years ago. But to speak of knickers, breasts and love-making today is quite definitely not half as aggressive as it used to be under Queen Victoria.

  The few jokes quoted above are about the English; they are not English sex jokes. I have studied many books with so-called English sex jokes in them and found them disappointing. Foreign books – telling so-called English jokes – picture silly and old-fashioned stereotypes, the Englishmen in these stories are either stupid snobs or homosexuals or both; worse still, the jokes as jokes are, on the whole, rather feeble. A number of American jokes I came across were based on linguistic differences and were hardly more than puns.

  According to Legman there are national characteristics in sex jokes. The Germans and the Dutch are especially addicted to scatology, ‘doubtless a reaction’, he explains, ‘to excessively strict and early toilet-training’. I have often wondered why the mention of the posterior of the human body in Germany, or instructing someone to ‘kiss my arse’ in Austria, was regarded as a superb joke inspiring uproarious laughter. The behind is regarded as an extremely funny part of the body in America, too.

  According to Renatus Hartog, a Dutchman, most French sex jokes deal with sexual technique and cuckolding.

  Someone tells his neighbour: ‘Listen, you forgot to pull the blinds last night and we were watching you making love to your wife.’

  The man shakes his head merrily: ‘The joke is on you. I wasn’t even at home last night.’

  This is, of course, a French joke; it could not be an English one.

  So what is an English sex joke?

  A few of them have real charm.

  A girl of six asks another little girl of five: ‘Are you a virgin?’

  The little one blushes and replies: ‘Not yet.’

  The next one would be classified by psychologists as a penis-envy joke.

  A little girl sees a little boy peeing and tells her mother: ‘Mummy, I want one of those.’

  Her mother replies: ‘If you are a good girl you will get one later.’

  Upon which her father butts in: ‘And if you are a naughty girl, you’ll get a lot of them.’

  Jokes about the little innocent girl are very old. Today the little innocent girl is not quite as innocent as she used to be.

  A little girl asks another: ‘What are you doing in that old man’s flat every afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, I have to play with his penis and he gives me 20p.’

  ‘Penis? what is a penis?’

  ‘It’s just like a cock, except it’s soft.’

  There are plenty of English jokes about male size – just as there are everywhere else in the world.

  A little boy goes with his French nanny to the zoo and sees the elephant having an enormous erection.

  ‘What’s that?’ asks the little boy.

  The nanny is very embarrassed, and replies: ‘Nothing.’

  A cockney standing by remarks: ‘Ain’t she spoilt?’

  Betting is a great passion of the English, and naturally enough betting and sex have been connected in many jokes.

  A father visits his son’s teacher and tells her that something must be done because the boy is on the way to becoming an obsessive gambler. He makes bets on everything all the time. The teacher promises to do what she can.

  Next day the boy tells the teacher that she looks like someone who is having her period. The teacher tells the boy that he is wrong. Oh no, says the boy, he is quite sure, in fact he is ready to bet fifty pence. Very well, says the teacher, takes him into the common-room, locks the door, lifts her skirt, pulls her pants down and supplies the required proof. The boy pays her the fifty pence.

  Next day the father appears again, even more worried.

  ‘I hope,’ says the teacher, ‘that this taught him a lesson.’

  ‘Like hell it did,’ says the father. ‘Yesterday morning he bet me five pounds that before evening he was going to see your pussy.’

  Quite a few jokes, naturally, are connected with the declining economic situation. The following joke used to be told about various East European countries in the fifties, but it has reached Britain now and probably the United States as well. A man appears in a Paris brothel (never mind that there are no brothels in Paris; in jokes there are) and Madame delegates young Mimi for the task but she runs down the stairs after five minutes and is quite indignant: ‘No. Not that. Certainly not.’

  Madame sends up the more experienced Fifi, with the same result. She is fuming, too: ‘No. Not that … out of the question.’

  Madame frowns and goes up herself. But two minutes later she, too, comes down looking furious.

  A man, an old habitué, gets curious and asks Madame, who is not put off too easily, ‘What the hell does he want?’

  ‘He wants to pay with Hungarian money.’

  Britain being a very literate country, some of its dirty jokes have literary connotations.

  A young man is sitting in a Rolls-Royce in darkest Mayfair, waiting for someone and smoking a cigar. A prowler goes by and knocks on the window of the car. The owner rolls the window down: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look, Guv’nor, I am a bit hard up, d’you think you could lend me 20p for a cup of tea?’

  The man in the Rolls replies: ‘Neither a lender nor a borrower be. William Shakespeare’ – and rolls his window up.

  The prowler is taken aback and walks away. But he stops after a few steps, turns back and knocks again on the window. Down comes the window again.

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Cunt. D. H. Lawrence.’

  And, finally, two jokes, which could not possibly be English. Their whole spirit, atmosphere and mentality are utterly alien to the British. The first is a Jewish joke (and more of them presently) whic
h I heard in Hungary from a wonderful old prima donna, the idol of the nation.

  Kohn and Gruen (the Central European heroes of many jokes) are playing cards and Gruen is losing heavily. He is very angry, and wants to needle Kohn, to make him lose concentration.

  ‘I say, Kohn, you know that Schwartz is having an affair with your wife?’

  No reaction. Kohn goes on playing.

  ‘He calls on her every afternoon at two and takes her out.’

  Kohn does not seem to hear, he plays on.

  ‘It’s half past two now. I would say it is just now that he climbs on her. This very moment.’

  Kohn puts his cards down and asks: ‘Listen, Gruen – are we playing cards seriously or are we gossiping?’

  The other joke is also a Central European one. There is no racial problem there between black and white but many of the nations and nationalities hate each other and love telling nasty and unfair jokes about people they dislike.

  ‘A Romanian officer does not accept money.’

  The butt of this pre-war joke is Romania.

  A Romanian lieutenant goes to another Balkan country and accompanies home a famous courtesan. He spends the night with her and is about to leave in the morning. He is girding on his sword when the lady asks him: ‘I say, what about money?’

  He clicks his heels and salutes: ‘A Romanian officer does not accept money.’

  Jewish Jokes

  If the English can smile at themselves, the Jews can positively roar with laughter at their own weaknesses and peculiarities. A nation must have a great deal of self-confidence to be able to laugh at itself and both these peoples – the English and the Jews – know perfectly well, who are the most excellent and admirable people in the world … although their answers to this question are not identical.

  Many people – I am one of them – think that Jewish jokes are the best of all. They are not only funny but are often wise and profound, revealing as much about human nature, the secrets of the human soul, as a good poem.

  The Jewish sense of humour must be one of the decisive factors in the Jews’ survival of thousands of years of persecution and diaspora. If you take your oppressors and persecutors seriously, you will sooner or later adopt their valuation of yourself; you will feel guilty and you will see yourself through their eyes. Take despots seriously and you will be broken by them and will, eventually, perish. But if you are able to laugh at them – see their stupidity, their vanity, their meanness – if you realize the fatuity of their claims to superiority, then oppression will steel you, make you stronger, more united as a group; and victory – or at least liberation – becomes possible. I am sure that the Jews of antiquity, wandering in the desert for forty years, were sustained not only by prayer, by Moses’ strength of character and by manna from heaven, but also by primordial Jewish jokes.

  But a lot of people have grave doubts about this thesis. Take this joke, for example, a product of Jewish humour in Czarist Russia.

  An old Jew is travelling on a train. A young and smug officer is the only other passenger in the compartment. The officer does not like the idea of being closeted with the old Jew for a long journey so he is silent and aloof for a long time. But in the end he gets bored and starts talking to the other man who is having his lunch now, from a brown paper parcel, placed on his knees.

  ‘I say, Jew,’ says the lieutenant, ‘you all have the reputation of being so clever.’

  ‘Well, perhaps we are.’

  ‘Are you? … Then tell me what makes you so clever?’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you that easily,’ says the old man. ‘The heads of fish.’

  ‘What d’you mean “the heads of fish”?’ asks the officer, astonished.

  ‘Yes … You see, the fish have wonderful brains. We eat them – and that’s all.’

  The officer is incredulous but the journey is long and one should try everything once, so he says: ‘Very well. Will you sell me a couple of those fish-heads you have there?’

  ‘With pleasure. It will be one rouble each.’

  The officer buys two fish-heads and starts munching them with the greatest disgust. Suddenly he exclaims: ‘I say, Jew … A whole herring costs only 50 kopeks. And you have sold me just the head of one for twice that price, a whole rouble.’

  The Jew nods with satisfaction: ‘You see … It’s working already …’

  This joke shows up the Russian officer as very stupid. But it also shows up the old Jew as a clever rogue who takes advantage of the lieutenant’s stupidity. The joke reflects an ability to mock oneself, but it also seems to accept the anti-semitic image of Jews. It is a ghetto-joke, many people maintain; a Yiddish joke.

  In Israel there is a great deal of hostility towards the Yiddish spirit and the Yiddish language. Some people revere it as an old tradition, but many young Israelis reject Yiddish as the culture of the ghetto. The ghetto may be the shame of the oppressors, not the shame of the Jews, but all the same, young Israelis do not cherish that phase of Jewish history. And this rebellious feeling, while it may be responsible for valuable gains, it is also responsible for a great loss.

  The loss is this. Jewish humour got more or less lost in transit to Israel. Jewish jokes still reign supreme except in that country. The Jewish sense of humour – as I have said earlier – was an effective shield against ruthless, brutal oppression but the Jews of Israel are no longer oppressed. They are a new nation, burning with a new nationalism and the Jewish sense of humour is being replaced by the sense of humour of a new, developing nation, the sense of humour of Uganda or Upper Volta.

  Other, more aggressive and sterner qualities are needed in Israel today than the mild self-mockery of the Polish-Jewish jokes. There is a new, precarious half-peace in that region but Israel was forced long ago to become a military camp, the Prussia of the Middle East.

  The old spirit, however, if not exactly flourishing is not yet dead. I heard this story about the Six Day War.

  A middle-aged man in his fifties goes to the Colonel on the first day of the war and volunteers his services. He is told that he is too old but he goes on pestering the Colonel who in the end tells him: ‘Very well. Take these 5000 leaflets, go up to the Arab lines just in front of us, get rid of them and come back.’

  The man returns six hours later and asks for another job. The Colonel shakes his head: ‘I’ve told you you are no good. What the hell were you doing for six hours?’

  The man gets a little indignant! ‘What was I doing, Colonel? Do you think it’s all that easy to sell 5000 Jewish leaflets to those Arabs?’

  This is, of course, the old-style Polish-Jewish joke about the cunning and slyness of the Jew who is slightly crooked but much cleverer than his adversary. It seems that the old-fashioned Jewish joke – miraculously – survives somehow even in Israel.

  Things seem to have come to a full circle. I have told this story – not a joke, a true story – in another book but I have to repeat it here.

  An Israeli couple are touring Europe with their eleven-year-old son. In Italy the boy asks his parents: ‘Are these people Jews?’

  ‘No, my boy,’ his father tells him, ‘they are Christians.’

  In Germany he asks again: ‘Are these people Jews?’

  He is told in Germany, in Holland, and in Sweden: ‘No, these people are not Jews, they are Christians.’

  Finally he exclaims with genuine sympathy: ‘Poor Christians! … It must be awful for them to be scattered like that all over the world.’

  The butt of the Jewish joke is, more often than not, the Jew himself. About the Jewish hostess: ‘Please, have another piece of cake, Herr Levy.’

  ‘No, thank you. I have already had two.’

  ‘You had four. But who’s counting?’

  The ‘Jewish Mamma’ jokes are innumerable. This one reflects her love and paranoia: a Mamma buys two shirts for her son’s birthday. He – to please his mother – goes into the other room and puts one on immediately. When he comes back, she looks at him anxiously
and asks: ‘You don’t like the other one?’

  Religion, particularly the clever twisting of the Talmud, is another favourite subject.

  A Jew in a small Polish village goes to the rabbi and tells him: ‘Rabbi, I’m worried. The Talmud says that whenever you drop a piece of bread and butter, it always falls on the buttered side. Today I’ve dropped a piece and it fell on the non-buttered side.’

  ‘Well,’ says the rabbi, ‘this was an exception.’

  ‘No, no, Rabbi. There should be no exceptions … The Talmud says always.’

  The rabbi scratches his head and tells the man to come back the next day, he will look it up. The man comes back and the rabbi tells him: ‘Yes, the Talmud does say that the bread and butter always falls on the buttered side. And, of course, it always does. All that’s happened was that you, stupid man, buttered the wrong side of the bread.’

  Jews and the law is another vast subject. When I was a law student in Budapest, one of my professors illustrated many important theses with Jewish jokes. How right he was. These are the points I remember best even today. This story had to illustrate something of the responsibility of the man who accepts deposits.

  Kohn and Gruen – the two permanent and immortal characters of these jokes – go to the rabbi and bring 10,000 crowns, a sizeable fortune, with them. They are planning some business together, they say, but they do not trust each other so will the rabbi keep that money. He is not to release it either to Kohn or to Gruen, only to the two together.

  Three days later Gruen comes up and asks for the money. The rabbi shakes his head. ‘You know perfectly well what the conditions are. You must come together.’

  ‘But Rabbi,’ says Gruen, ‘Kohn knows all about it, he asked me to collect the money …’

  The rabbi is adamant but Gruen goes on: ‘Look out of the window, Rabbi. Kohn knows that I am here, he is standing down there at the corner, waiting for me.’

  The rabbi looks out of the window, Kohn indeed is there, waiting.

  Gruen goes on talking and in the end the rabbi gives in and hands the money over.