I didn’t make up a joke but I started one off in Spain.
Waaaay back in 1977 when I was an English Assistant at a Spanish Poly I told my room-mate the old chestnut about the kid travelling through the city in a taxi with his Mum. He asks: “Mum, who are all those ladies waiting on the corners?” Mum blushes red and stammers: “Er… er… they’re sailors’ wives waiting for their husbands to come home!” The taxi driver turns round and says: “Tell the lad the truth! They’re prostitutes, that’s what they are!” The mother is furious but says nothing. A few minutes later the small boy asks again: “Mum, do prostitutes have little boys?” The mum replies: “Of course they do – where do you think taxi divers come from?”
The effect was uexpected as my room mate almost pissed himself laughing. Anybody who speaks a bit of Spanish will know that this joke works better in Spanish than in English because the favourite Spanish curse is “Hijo de puta!” which means literally “Son of a whore” and is used very commonly in the sense of the American “Sonofabitch”.
So the next day I told the same joke to one of my classes with the same result – instant hysterical laughter. I must have told the joke to 250 different students during that week and kick-started it in Spain because most will have gone straight home and re-told it. About five years later I was back in Spain and a Spaniard told me the very same joke, unchanged and using the very same words, so well did the joke work in Spanish. I reckon my joke ony had to find its way to the ears of somebody who worked for radio or TV and it must have gone national because I’m certain it was brand new to eveybody who heard it from me.
My claim to fame.
