 It might be 1600 years old, but the Dead Parrot joke is still funnier than punny newspaper headlines.
November 15, 2008 10:38 PM
Dead Parrot Joke by Daniel Flynn
ATHENS - "I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it."
For those who believe the ancient Greeks thought of everything first, proof has been found in a 4th century AD joke book featuring an ancestor of Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch where a man returns a parrot to a shop, complaining it is dead.
The 1,600-year-old work entitled Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, one of the world's oldest joke books, features a joke in which a man complains that a slave he has just bought has died, its publisher said on Friday.
"By the gods", answers the slave's seller, "when he was with me, he never did any such thing!"
In a British comedy act Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, first aired in 1969 and regularly voted one of the funniest ever, the pet-shop owner says the parrot, a "Norwegian Blue", is not dead, just "resting" or "pining for the fjords".
The English-language book will appeal to those who
swear that the old jokes are the best ones. Many of
its 265 gags will seem strikingly familiar, suggesting
that sex, dimwits, nagging wives and flatulence have
raised laughs for centuries.
FAR-FETCHED CLOAK
In many of the jokes, a slow-witted figure known as the
"student dunce" is the butt of the jokes. In one, the
student dunce goes to the city and a friend asks him to
buy two 15-year-old slaves: `No problem,' responds the
dunce. `If I don't find two 15-year-olds, I'll get one
30-year-old.'
In another, someone asks to borrow the student's
cloak to go down to the country. "I have a cloak to go
down to your ankle, but I don't have one that reaches to
the country," he replies.
The manuscript is attributed to a pair of ancient
comedians called Hierocles and Philagrius. Little is known
about them except that they were most likely the
compilers of the jokes, not the original writers.
The multimedia e-book, which can be purchased online (www.yudu.com/oldestjokebook), features veteran
British comedian Jim Bowen, 71, reviving the lines before
a 21-century audience.
"Jim Bowen brings them back from the dead. It's like
Jurassic Park for jokes," Richard Stephenson, CEO of
digital publisher YUDU, said.
For Bowen, much of the material seemed very familiar:
"One or two of them are jokes I've seen in peoples' acts
nowadays, slightly updated: they put in a motor car
instead of a chariot."
Other one-liners in Philogelos may baffle a modern
audience, such as a series of jokes about a lettuce, which
only make sense in light of the ancient belief it was an
aphrodisiac.
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