This year I bought one of my brothers the B3ta book of Sick Jokes for Christmas. Unfortunately this came with us down to my Nan’ house. Early in the day some subtle sniggers were had between me and my brothers over such gems as:

What were Rod Hull’s last words?

Emu grab that fucking gutter!

And

What do you call a black man flying a plane?

A pilot you racist.

It was liberarily thumbed throughout the day. Almost everyone picked it up and had a little chuckle, or accused me of being wrong, or both at some point, but it wasn’t until around 11.30 that my drunken uncle picked it up.

Like everyone else he read it, but instead of reading it to himself, or reading out a select few of the more suitable gags he pissed himself until he was almost crying and started spouting a stream of filth. At first pushing the boundaries went well, I wouldn’t have read this, but I wanted too:

What’s yellow and feeds of dead Beatles?

Yoko Ono

Then:

Why don’t black people dream?

The last one that had a dream got shot

Here things started to go a bit wrong and my mother started desperately trying to change the subject while clearly silently cursing the day I was born. (I don’t think everyone actually go the subtlety in that joke, which didn’t help). We went through almost the entire Stevie Wonder section which went OK, but when we got to the misogynistic ones the mood went a little sour.

We spirited the book away while my uncle was distracted with a bottle of Jack Daniels. We had a lucky escape, the book has sections on Aids vs. Cancer, dead babies and cruelty to animals. Believe me the ones he read out weren’t even the worst. But even if he had read those out I’m not sure if they could be much worse than being misogynistic at Christmas. My Mother's got five sisters and it is those six women that hold the family together. When it comes to family women rule.

P.S. I'd just like to say I also bought my bro a Mighty Boosh DVD as the book is only about 3 quid and I'm not stingy, honest.