Joke booth: My own two feet

Marie Gillespie Marie says

What’s most interesting about this clip is the spontaneous humour and affection that flows between three friends in response to the joke booth situation. It’s a beautiful example of how humour and joking relationships thrive and flourish in safe and secure social relations, reflecting on their intimacy and affirming their friendship.

Joking relationships can a wonderful way of affirming and strengthening human bonds of friendship. Here, the actual joke becomes incidental and flops but the sheer fun in witty banter and repartee is infectious.

There is not enough detail in the joke to show how reliant the son is on his father – you need to hear that the father wakes the son up in the morning, puts the toothpaste on the brush, runs his bath for him, lays his clothes out for him, making sure there’s creases in the pants, and starch in the shirt collar – and after each luxury treatment the son says – ‘leave me alone dad, I’m a grown up. I can fend for myself. I’m not a baby.'

But it’s a joke that plays on role reversal – the father taking a conventionally maternal role – and the women here, like across the survey, really delight in mocking their male counterparts.