Rob Manuel

Chatting to a friend today:

Me: When does a sick joke go too far?

Him: Well, I’m Jewish and I’m not keen on holocaust jokes.

Me: My wife is half Jewish and she doesn’t mind me doing the ‘farting, holding her head under the bed covers and saying “gassing the jews” gag.’

Him: My family died. It depends on who’s saying them.

Me: My son is quarter-Jewish, I reckon that just means 25% less presents at Christmas.

Him: Actually, I’ve got a sick joke. I’ve been doing it for 15 years. It gets worse with each telling.

Me: Is this the aristocrats joke?

Him: Nah. It’s my mate right. Friends for ever. But his mum is fat. Really fat.

Me: Fat is funny.

Him: The joke is basically his dad saying, (does gruff voice) “Go up stairs and fuck yer mum.”

Me: Ha.

Him: So the Dad died right, and we’re at the funeral and the joke became, “I am a ghost. Dig up my grave. Get one of my bones and go upstairs and fuck your mum.”

Me: Each time more detail.

Him: Yeah. And we were caught at the funeral. Bloke in front of us heard us and turned round with a “did I really here that?” look. And my mate, to his eternal credit waits for him to turn around and says, “Yes. You really heard that.”

Me: So no limits then?

Him: Well, you find your own line.

Me: Right. I’ll try a joke on you. What looks like an elephant and fucks spades?

Him: Dunno.

Me: Dawn French. Is that racist?

Him: Well I’m laughing.

Me: There’s the theory that being equally offensive to everyone makes everything ok. But feels a bit of a cop-out to me.

Him: Like I said, you find your own line.

Picture this. It’s the year 2000 and I’m working as a webby person at some agency and I’m fucking miserable. I’m so bored of bashing out websites for corporate clients, I spent most of my time pretending to work, but secretly cooking-up evil plots to fill the internet with weird crap.

Then a small monkey tells me there’s a pop-gossip newsletter called Popbitch, sounds fun, so I sign up.

The first newsletter pops into my inbox and there’s a joke. The joke makes me laugh so much that I forward it to my mates going, “I got this from Popbitch. Great joke.”

But it doesn’t end there. I send fan mail to the site and offer a few thoughts on why I like it. A dialogue opens with the mysterious person who signs their emails “Popbtich xx.”

Eventually the mystery reveals as I’m invited for a drink and it turns out it’s a bloke called Neil who, when not revealing the foulest gossip known to man, is running a project for a magazine company on “interesting things to do on the internet.”

He asks me to work for his department and help think up the future. Of course we all got sacked but B3ta came from it.

And the joke that changed my life?

My dog’s got no nose. How does it smell? Like Daniella Westbrook.

Oooh. How exciting, my inbox is pinging like a broken lift:

“Hi there, I love B3ta, and usefully work in Waterstones. I would totally stock anything to do with B3ta (like that Law of the Playground one, and the Nicey and Wifey one). I am certain as a till point book we would sell plenty.”

Till point book?

This is a new term to me, I imagine it means those books that are placed by the till for impulse purchasing. A bit like sweets in supermarkets.

Fantastic stuff.

I wonder if we can make the book smell like freshly-baked bread?