A year of jokes

Originally posted @ 12:59 am, Thu 27th Jan 2011

Despite the stark progress in the academic attainment of children who attend Nottingham City schools at year 11, concern remains that progress at primary school, especially in reading, is not strong enough.

So 2011 is being declared a year of reading and the first event has been a visit to the Council House by Jeremy Strong, who has published 77 books aimed at young children ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Strong ). Kids from 6 primary schools attended and BBC tv and others came to report on the event.

Jeremy read a passage from his latest book and then held a kind of x-factor audition with 3 kids as judges and 5 kids telling a joke each. Some of these were odd.

“What biscuit does a monkey eat?” “A chocolate chimp cookie.”

“Why did the toilet roll go down the hill?” “To reach the bottom.”

“Why did the bicycle stand?” “Because it was too tired.” (“two tyred”)

The kids were well into this and were sharing jokes with those of us hiding behind the book stall at the back, especially the year 4s from Clifton.

“Will you know who we are tomorrow?” “Do I say yes?” “Yes.” “Yes.”

“Will you know who we are next month?” “Do I say yes?” “Yes.” “Yes.”

“Will you know who we are next year?” “Do I say yes again?” “Yes.” “Yes.”

“Knock! Knock!” “Who’s there?” “You’ve forgotten us already!”

So I started to tell them the “wide mouth frog joke”, acclaimed by French and Saunders as the funniest joke ever. They got as far as stretching their mouths wide and meeting the giraffe, before the teacher turned up to take them home – they never got to hear the punch line!

But it strikes me that one way to encourage reading is to provide them with free compendium books of jokes.

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The humour in the Commons Chamber can feel forced in a different way.

But the laughter at yesterday's announcement about control orders being abolished (and being replaced by a new form of control order) appeared entirely unforced.