Thursday 29 October 2009

Return to Plagiarists' Corner

Wow!

Barely was the cyber-ink dry on the below discussion of comedy plagiarism, when I wrote the following Tweet:

The tiddly-wink factory is counter-productive.
from web

A slightly silly joke.

But just now I've been reading an article on the Guardian about inoffensive comics. (It must be conflicting to be on that list. It's good to not hurt peoples' feelings, but if you don't offend anyone, you're probably doing something wrong.)

The last comedian on the list is called Alex Horne (who I admit I've never heard of before). They printed an example of his humour, and here it is:

"My dad worked in a tiddlywinks factory. It was counterproductive."

That's pretty scary! Obviously, he came up with it first, but I'm sure I've never heard the joke before. I even remember working the joke out. I seem to be a bit more hyphen-happy than he is...

It just goes to show that two people can independently come up with the same joke. One can be successful, and one can be a nobody.

I'll leave it to you to work out which is which.

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