Funniest thing I ever heard

One of your number, gentle readers, asked me a difficult question last week. I was asked what was the single funniest thing I’d ever heard or read.
This was, for me, a difficult question because not only have I always been an avid reader, but also I’ve encountered quite a few funny experiences in my largely mis-spent life (as the content of this column from week to week will testify).
In trying to answer this question, I immediately discarded my personal experiences, mainly because most of them were only funny to me or funny because of the way I looked back on them years later. In other words, I may have given you a giggle here or there in telling tales on myself, but most of the odd ball things that have befallen me weren’t all that uproarious at the time.
My mind gravitated (as it often does) to classic bits of humor and humorists whom I hold in high regard. These include Groucho Marx, S.J. Pearlman, Nunnaly Johnson, Goodman Ace, Garrison Keilor, James Thurber, Mark Twain and John Cleese. I’m not sure how Keilor and Cleese would feel about being included in that group since they are the only ones still above the sod.
But in working my way down to one particular piece, I had to select a recitation by the late Gerard Hoffnung, an English humorist, tuba player and raconteur. Hoffnung was a madman, although a very British madman. His humor was always very understated and delivered in the stereotypical English “pip pip and cheerio” style of the English country squire. Not to everyone’s taste, I’ll grant you, but the guy broke me up.
The particular piece I consider the funniest comes from a speech Hoffnung made to the Oxford Union not long before his death in 1954. It is in the form of the recitation of a letter from a brick layer to his employers, explaining what happened when the brick layer repaired a building that had been damaged in a storm. The recitation is rather long and drawn out but describes events that occurred in a matter of moments. In short, it recounts a series of painful misadventures experienced while the brick layer attempted to lower a barrel full of left-over bricks from the top of the building to the bottom using a crudely rigged rope and pulley.
I’d wanted a copy of that recording for years but due to some rather strange twists in the British copyright laws, recordings of Hoffnung’s work aren’t available on this side of the Atlantic. I’d only heard them on the radio thanks to the eclectic tastes of some folks at National Public Radio.
But my darling wife, knowing of my desire for my own copy of Hoffnung’s recitation, got on the internet and located a gentleman in England who’s hobby is making compact discs. He was kind enough to make a disc of the desired material and send it to her, which she presented to me as an early Father’s Day present. I’d thank the English gentleman by name, but since his kindness involved the breaking, no, make that “fracturing” of quite a few of the laws of his homeland, I’ll just just keep him anonymous. My wife I’ll thank in my own way, and privately, thank you.
If you’d like to hear the recording, I’ll be happy to play it for you, but I’m not loaning it out to anybody. Chances of ever getting another one are pretty slim.