The Gag Boooks

There was a time, long, long ago, when a Saturday and a Sunday night were not complete unless you had sat in a large room with a lot of other people, drunk some beer (lager and lime for the ladies), and been entertained by “the turn” on the small stage at the front of the room.

I speak of the Working Mens Club institution, and my father was a devotee.

Every district had its Working Mans Club, some had several, some areas of this city had huge Working Mens Clubs and the Working Mens Clubs were far, far busier than the pubs that stood alongside them as the beer in the Working Mens Clubs was heavily subsidised by the non-profit nature of the member-owned clubs, as was the entertainment on a weekend.

The one thing that my father could never comprehend and which would produce a criticising comment from his lips every time he visited my dwelling place in the North East was that up there it was commonplace to pay a cover charge on the concert room door on a Saturday and Sunday in order to pay for “the turn” whereas in Yorkshire such a thing was unheard of, we are talking about a cover charge of twenty pence or similar here…

Brian, the man who became Walter Matthau to my fathers Jack Lemmon when they eventually ended up sharing an apartment in Benidorm, was the concert secretary at East End Park Working Mans Club and also produced the monthly “Club Guide” for West Yorkshire, a small booklet involving lots of beer advertising, in which each Working Mans Club in the region (numbering hundreds) advertised their entertainment for the following month.

The “club book” as it became known, used its own syntax to describe the acts and help the clubs attract affiliated members to its doors, for if you were a member of a club for a few pence more you could buy your “Affiliated Card”  which would gain you free admission to any other club in the country – you cannot imagine such a bargain existing really can you ?

“Guitar Vocal” the club book would suggest, and my father would ponder for a while to try and recall whether they had seen this act before, “hmmm, Arthur Guitar, didn’t we see him at Harehills ?” he would murmur, and yes, there really was an act called Arthur Guitar.

Eventually every Saturday and Sunday night the decision would be made, “There’s a comedy juggling act with dogs on at Beeston” he’d declare, “Its been a while since I’ve seen a comedy juggling act with dogs” and he’d throw the club book back into the magazine rack and tell my mother to hurry up washing the dishes and get “dolled up” for it could take her a couple of hours to get ready for a night out.

Where were we, the gag books, ah yes…

So they would sit there, right at the front of the room, for the rule of my father was that in every club they visited they had to have the table right on the front row, right in the middle of the room and to hell with whoever usually sat there, and if the “turn” for that night was a comedian he would slip from his inside pocket a small pocket diary and a pen, and underneath the table, and every time he laughed at a joke, he would write the punchline into the diary.

For why ?

For his own act of course, for my father was an amateur singer and raconteur of repute.

Walk into any pub or club anywhere in the land and if the call went out for someone to entertain the clientele my father would be the man who would be grabbing the microphone before the announcement died to the echo, Frank Sinatra songs and “some gags” in between the songs being his act – thats where his “gag books” came in to play.

When he died I inherited his gag books, a collection of small pocket diaries spanning several years, none of them with regular diary entries in them, all of them with closely scribbled and anonymous punch lines to jokes where I have no idea of the content.

“…and the woman said, it was the ugliest snake I’ve ever seen so I hit it with a rake”  was one unknown gag, “…bloody hell, you’ve won the lottery too” was another, as recounted last Friday of course, I have pages and pages with thousands of punch lines listed therein and no idea of what the joke is, most of them are bizarre and convoluted and sometimes quite difficult to read as of course he would be writing under the table in the dark without trying to look down at his lap too much and give the game away that he was stealing another comedians material.

…so there’s a knock at the door and the man answers and theres a bloke stood there asking him for a job

“Go on mate” he says, “I’ll do anything, wash your car, sweep the driveway, give me a job for a fiver and I’ll do it”

“I’m watching telly” the man protests “I haven’t got any jobs for you to do

“Go on, wash your windows, do a bit of gardening, I need a fiver, give me a job mate” the bloke begs

“Well” he thinks, “I suppose  the porch could do with a lick of paint”

He gives the bloke a paint pot and a brush, tells him to paint the porch, and goes back to his telly

Ten minutes later theres a knock on the door

“Done it mate” the bloke explains, “oh and by the way, its not a porch, its a Ferrari”

Yes, I’ve got hundred of these, but just the punch lines…