Brett Ellis on the loss of the traditional joke shop gags

With tiredness, coupled with morphing into an introvert, days of adventure are few and far between as you prefer to vegetate on the sofa and watch Murder She Wrote as opposed to getting out there and doing ‘stuff.’

During one of these educational interludes recently, I found myself, in my head, shouting at the radio as they discussed ‘old-style joke shops’ which ‘don’t’ exist anymore.

In truth, they do, albeit the genre now offers slim pickings to those of us who still get aroused by slapstick, end of the pier type humour, the likes of which, along with ‘saucy’ postcards, have died a death of a thousand woke cuts in recent years.

The palm electric buzzer was a favourite despite it being so obvious that you had a huge lump of metal in your hand, as you went to shake your father’s hand, which you would never do normally at home.

Brett Ellis says that modern joke shops are not the same as the old ones The Whoopee cushion is still in existence and, decades after its invention (not by Whoopi Goldberg, despite the rumours), having failed to trick a man, woman, or child of any intellectual capacity, it still blows on regardless.

It was blaringly obvious as the cushion, now moved to the area of the chair where your posterior was about to enter, was suspended in mid-air, and the recipient of the gag had to push in just the right area to ensure the parp! sound emitted, and we could all guffaw heartily at such a jape!

Itching powder was also a go-to for me back in the day, but is probably no longer a thing as it’s no doubt deemed Hazchem. Its modern-day use would be frowned upon as much as opening a family-sized bag of KP nuts on a flight just after they’d announced a bairn with a serious nut allergy was in situ.

The problem with all these jokes was, having used them once, the attempt to garner a similar round of applause with attempts two, five and 25 meant the humour levels diminished rapidly turn by turn.

And so, in desperation, and with the circus no longer in town, you would resort to scraping the joke shop barrel by frequenting some of those stick-in-the-eye eyeballs, or the comedy glasses with the springs, that proved to be as amusing as Rosie Jones.

It may be worth a resurgence of such slapstick humour as, well, we are all a little bit too serious nowadays, aren’t we? Anyone for a stick of Wrigley’s gum? Come and help yourselves… but make it snappy….

• Brett Ellis is a teacher.