Michael Winner's Hymie Joke Book E-Book

Michael Winner

• Herausgeber: The Robson Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Feared and enjoyed around the world, Michael Winner's column in the Sunday Times is something of a phenomenon. One day, on a whim, the great man threw in a few of his favourite Jewish jokes. From such tiny acorns a cult following has grown, and old Hymie, the butt of many jokes, took on new life. By popular demand, here is a collection of the ribald, edgy and side-splittingly funny bon mots from Winner's much-loved (and hated) alter ego. This is not for the easily offended!

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title PageForeword by Michael WinnerThe JokesHymie AwardsMy Favourite ColumnsCopyright

FOREWORD BY MICHAEL WINNER

Humour changes over the years. What used to be considered humorous before political correctness enveloped us would not be considered humorous today because it would be deemed ‘insulting’. In this respect, the Hymie jokes which appear in this book are humorous for most of us but considered in dubious taste and not funny at all by some Jewish people who wrote to complain. They are luckily very much in the minority – and in fact most of the jokes were sent to me by Jews. The complainers seem to have the belief that Hymie is a stereotypical Jew that no longer exists and he should not be brought before the world, even in joke form.

The archetypal butt of jokes, if you’re American, was the Poles and in England it’s largely the Irish. The jokes were perfectly funny but they became unacceptable as time wore on. The fact is that those who suffer persecution or deprivation in their lives make jokes of their situation.

The funniest evening I ever spent was in Northern Ireland at the time of the Troubles. Indeed at a time when their troubles were at their most severe with prisoners defecating in their cells and slaughter going on everywhere. I was there to do an Any Questions radio programme. After the programme the BBC executives involved and the panel of Any Questions sat on little gold chairs in a hotel room in Belfast. The BBC executives, who were all from Northern Ireland, told a series of jokes that lasted the entire evening. They were some of the funniest stories I have ever heard but could be described as being in appalling taste or having a lack of taste. They drew on the situation in Northern Ireland as it was, including people having their legs shot off, defecating all over their cells, knee-capping each other. Not normally great material for jokes, but told by these Northern Irish people who were living under this great stress it was a relief for them to be able to tell jokes like that, and unbelievably funny. I have never spent an evening hearing funnier stories than on that occasion. But then the Irish have a great sense of humour.

On one occasion I was giving a lecture in Northern Ireland. A lady picked me up at the airport and she said, “My husband wanted to come and greet you but he’s marching in an anti-English march.” As we went down a certain street she pointed out, “That’s the British Embassy. We burnt it down yesterday.” On the same visit I was asked to attend a theatre where I was doing my one-man show precisely at 7pm. An interviewer would greet me and familiarise himself with my work, and the show would start half an hour later at 7.30pm. At 7pm I turned up at this theatre, which was totally deserted, it was like a bad day in Hiroshima. Nobody was there or anywhere round the place. Eventually we found an old porter and he let us in the back and showed us to a musty dressing room where we waited. And waited. And waited. There was no sign of anybody in the building. There was no sign that there was going to be an event or that any audience would turn up at all. From time to time my publicity man would look through the curtains at an empty theatre and say, “There’s still no sign of anybody coming.” This went on until 7.30pm when the interviewer eventually turned up to meet me. I said, “It’s 7.30pm and you were insistent I should be here on the dot of seven yet you were not here.” “Ah yes,” said the interviewer, “we never turn up on time in Ireland, the other person might not be ready.” That was a disarming remark if ever I heard one. The show was scheduled to start at 7.30pm. At approximately 7.35pm, my publicist looked through the curtains and said, “Six people have just entered the hall.” Thus they trickled in and at 8.15pm, forty-five minutes after the announced commencement of proceedings, the room was absolutely packed and I went on stage before a very appreciative and entertaining audience.

One of the great moments of Jewish humour gone wrong, or actually right, was when the Jewish comedian Jackie Mason performed for Thames Television, An Evening with Jackie Mason. Now, if you look at Jackie’s jokes carefully they could be considered anti-Semitic. Being a Jew he can get away with it. (He does refer to President Obama as a schwarzer in one of the funniest routines I’ve ever heard about an American President. The gist of it being if you have to have a schwarzer who’s President at least get someone who’s black and not someone whose antecedents are largely white.) Anyway on this particular occasion, after it finished, Pamela Stephenson came over to me and said, “No wonder the Jews hate Jackie Mason. He’s so anti-Semitic.” I said, “Pamela, darling, they don’t hate Jackie Mason, the Jews adore Jackie Mason. They pack his theatre shows. He’s an absolute hero among the Jewish people.” The next day the Telegraph said in its review that Jackie Mason told the sort of jokes that they were brought up to believe were extremely bad taste and anti-Semitic, which may or may not be true but they are bloody funny – and most Jews have a sense of humour.

During this particular evening the celebrities in the audience were given questions to ask and that’s it. It’s not really open to the public. It so happened that in the audience I noticed a man called Josef Buchenwald Behrmann. Josef Buchenwald Behrmann was an actor who very much played on the fact that he had been an inmate of Buchenwald concentration camp – to such an extent that he incorporated the word ‘Buchenwald’ into his name. So everybody employed him. He was actually a bloody nuisance. I remember Michael Caine saying that on The Ipcress File Behrmann insisted on having the same size chair as him. That evening, Josef Buchenwald Behrmann was sitting in the audience wearing a pink tallit (prayer shawl), a pink skullcap and dressed like an old-fashioned Rabbi, except in pink. As Jackie Mason was answering the questions and expecting the set people to come forward with a question, I saw Behrmann put his hand up. Obviously the producers had no idea who he was and thought, “Here’s a Jew dressed like a Rabbi, let’s give him a question.” I could see all the microphones swinging over to Behrmann and the cameras that were not facing the stage turning to him as well. I thought to myself, “I am the only person here who knows what’s going to happen now. Let them carry on in their ignorance.” So, having called for the question, Josef Buchenwald Behrmann said in his very thick Jewish accent, “Mr Mason, if you were standing in line for the gas chamber in Buchenwald and you were naked and awaiting going to your death, what joke would you tell?” I tell you that brought the audience to its heels. There was a stunned silence. The whole room went into complete shock. Jackie Mason made the mistake of answering. He said, “Really you know this is not that sort of a show. This is an entertainment show. This is not the sort of thing we can discuss in a show like this.” And then Jackie Mason made a fatal error. He said, “Who in Buchenwald standing naked in line for the gas chamber would make a joke?” To which Josef Buchenwald Behrmann replied, “I was there, Mr Mason, we did tell jokes. I was there.” This left everyone totally stupefied. Jackie really fell to pieces for the next twenty minutes. Both the audience and Jackie had to regroup mentally. Well, the show continued and when it finished I climbed the steps of the auditorium, passing Josef Buchenwald Behrmann. He said, “Tell me, Michael, when you go home, are you driving anywhere near Baker Street?” I said, “No, Josef, I’m not. No.” I consider that one of the most memorable evenings in my life and it demonstrated comedy or the lack of comedy very well.

Of course the Jews always have a wonderful world-weary way of using put-downs. My father had a friend called Mr Kay who lived on the sixth floor of a block of flats and Mr Kay said to my father, “You know, my son is always threatening suicide. He’s threatening to throw himself out of the window.” To which my father replied, “My advice is move to the ground floor.”

One of the funniest things that ever happened to me was when I was on the beach of Sandy Lane Hotel with my friend Andrew Neil. We lay on adjacent sun-loungers. In those days, although the beach was meant to be for residents only, a certain member of the management team would accept back-handers and see that people who were not guests got to use the beach. There was a Jewish family whose father was very short and had about four sons, one of whom was crippled. He was very nice but the others were noisy and brought ghetto blasters on to the beach. So I said to the beach attendant, “Will you please see that Mr X and his family are positioned some way away from me.” The beach attendant obviously told this to Mr X and his family and, while Andrew Neil and I are lying on the beach, Mr X comes over and shouts in a very loud and common voice, “I wanna see you.” Well, he could see me. I was there on a sun-lounger in front of him. I stood up thinking, “Well, where does he want to see me?” whereupon Mr X started a tirade, “I have been coming to this hotel longer than you have. How dare you say you don’t want my family anywhere near you. I have a crippled son. It’s a total disgrace. What I should do is take that beach umbrella and stick it up your arse. And then when I’ve stuck it up your arse, I’ll open it!” At this point Andrew Neil looked up and said, “If I’d known it was going to be this much fun I wouldn’t have brought a book.” I thought that was all pretty funny.

When I went to Israel I took with me a number of movie stars for a film called Appointment with Death. One of them was Peter Ustinov, who everyone assumed was Jewish. In fact, he was extremely anti-Semitic with one side of his family white Russian and the other side Palestinian. At the movie press conference in Tel Aviv, a local journalist said, “Mr Ustinov, are you Jewish?” to which he replied very gruffly, “No, I’m not.” The journalist pursued the matter and said, “Well, we always thought you were.” To which Peter said, “Well, you’re wrong.” Also on the movie was Lauren Bacall, who had a really very Jewish name and was very pro-Jewish. The cast were in a room off a square in Jaffa and Peter was going on and on. Finally Bacall screamed at him, “Peter, you are a dreadful anti-Semite!” and walked out of the room, followed by the rest of the cast. Peter loves telling stories and suddenly his audience was gone so he came out of the square and started telling stories to a Jewish attendant who was sweeping the square. Another time we were in a Chinese restaurant and Peter went to the only other two people in the room and started telling them stories. His stories, I might add, were extremely amusing and he was of course a wonderful mimic. In spite of being a bit of a monster – he never remembered his lines – I liked him. Towards the end of the movie we were dining in Haifa and Peter said to me, “If you were living in Israel, Michael, where would you like to live?” Now I actually enjoyed Israel very much to my surprise but I answered, “By the airport, Peter, so I can get out easily.” To which Ustinov said, “I wish I could come out with remarks like that.” I said, “Well you can’t, Peter, because you’re a well-known anti-Semite and they don’t sound as good coming from you.”

He was a dear friend, Peter, until the day he died, and he was responsible for the finest after-dinner speech I’ve ever heard in my life. Sometime after the movie, I got the Directors’ Guild of Great Britain to give a Lifetime Achievement Award to Stanley Kubrick, who unfortunately died a couple of weeks before the ceremony. But all Stanley’s family turned up. I hadn’t seen Peter for a long time and when I did it was a shock. He’d become a very old man, fumbled, shuffled, he didn’t look as if he’d last the evening. When the time came for him to make his speech – and he’d been chosen because he was in Spartacus directed by Stanley Kubrick – he came slowly on to the stage. The minute he got behind the microphone there was a transformation. Like all true professionals, something kicked in and he was no longer at death’s door. He was the old witty Peter Ustinov in full flood. He proceeded to give a detailed account of the first script reading of Spartacus. He imitated exactly what everybody said and how they said it. I’m talking here about Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, John Gavin and all the others. It was a stunningly brilliant speech and unquestionably the funniest I’ve ever heard. When it finished he suddenly became an old man again and shuffled back to my table where he sat comatose for the rest of the evening.

So humour can be a great pick-me-up. It can restore life to the almost dead. In 1963, I produced a theatre show at the Comedy Theatre called Nights at the Comedy. It was a sort of variety show hosted by a man called Daniel Farson. When I say I produced it, I was junior producer to a very peculiar gentleman called William Donaldson. During the first week of the run, William Donaldson ran out of money and vanished. This left the cast unpaid and in the lurch. There was, and rightly so, some considerable fury backstage. There were many distinguished artists involved. It was the first show ever done in the West End by Jimmy Tarbuck and also included a very famous old comedian called Jimmy James. Along with them, various other people were now denuded of their salary. I went round the dressing rooms to try and appease people, which of course I could not, and the one who took it very well was Jimmy James. He said, “Michael, I’ve been in the business over fifty years, I’ve seen this happen many times. Don’t upset yourself about it.”

Some humour is in such bad taste that I come out with a remark and think, “My goodness, I’ve gone too far this time!” Such an event occurred when I was making a movie called Hannibal Brooks. I came back to England every weekend to see the rushes and then returned to Austria. On this particular occasion I returned to Austria to be told that one English stuntman, who was very gung-ho but not too bright, had driven a German World War II vehicle into a crowd of people. “He hit a young man,” I was told, and broke his leg and arm. “Oh well,” I said, “that’s one back for the six million.” A visiting journalist came down the next day, was told of this remark and printed it in a London evening paper. I was expecting to get heavily criticised. Instead I’ve never had so many letters of congratulations and compliments for anything I ever said!

Moishe Pipick is a wonderful phrase used by Jews. Moishe Pipick is, as it were, the lowest of the low. When the highly mercurial film producer Menahem Golan had sold some movies to Warner Brothers but could not deliver them because he’d sold them to somebody else as well, I said, “Menahem, will Warner Brothers not take you to court to get the money back?” He said, “No, they won’t. The worst they can do is call me Moishe Pipick.”

There are people who collect jokes. They insist on telling you jokes on the telephone. And when you meet them over a dinner they tell non-stop jokes that are so dirty and so horrible that nobody wants to hear them. In this case I’m thinking of a very distinguished British actor whose wife continually upbraids him to stop telling these stupid jokes, as indeed do I. There’s also a well-known rock musician. They are both very nice people but they seem to have this absolutely insatiable desire to tell endless dirty jokes, each one more vulgar and less funny than the one before. The only thing to do is try and shut them up, because it has nothing to do with humour but more to do with seeing how dirty the jokes can get before shocking people.

Funny remarks are rare. I recall one made by a nurse who was visiting me in hospital with my wife Geraldine. I was in the Cromwell Hospital for a few days and I said on Friday evening, “How do I get out of here?” meaning who’s going to release me officially from the hospital. So I said, “How do I get out of here?” to which Nurse Amparo replied, “Follow the exit signs.” I thought that was very funny, but maybe that’s because I’d recently come out of illness.

Of course there are things that are funny to me which are not funny to anybody else. The first time I ever directed anybody was on a raised ledge of a windowsill at my school. The actors, who were children, included a boy called Robert Brindley. He was meant to come on and do some acting. I hit out at the curtain where he was hiding behind and said, “Come on, Robert, you’re on.” But I pushed him out the window. We were one floor up. He fell to the ground and went around for the next two weeks with his arm in a sling. I obviously have a rather odd sense of humour because I found that extremely funny.

So now we come to Hymie. Hymie is the ever elusive wandering Jew. Things happen to him continually that do not happen to the rest of us but Hymie bears it all with good humour and skill. People say that such a person no longer exists. That’s nonsense. I know lots of people who could be Hymie in attitude, appearance and marvellous sense of humour. So they unquestionably do exist. Hymie is the butt of jokes because they are things that happen to him in his real life. Our Hymie stories are either sent in by Sunday Times readers, or by friends, but they all have one thing in common: they’re extremely funny. And here they are.

THE JOKES

Hymie is getting very excited about the publication of some new Jewish erotica… 50 Shades of Oy Vey… Boom.

Mr Shapiro, the Matchmaker, goes to see Hymie who is, at the time, a confirmed bachelor. He says, “Hymie, don’t leave it too late. I have exactly the girl you need. You only have to say the word and you’ll meet and be married in no time.” “Don’t bother,” replies Hymie, “I’ve two sisters at home who look after all my needs.” “That’s well and good,” says the Matchmaker, “but all the sisters in the world cannot fill the role of a wife.” “I said two sisters. I didn’t say they were mine,” responds Hymie.

Hymie and his wife Becky join their synagogue’s Hebrew classes. At the end of their first week their teacher, Rabbi Goldbloom, asks Hymie, “So what do you think of my Hebrew class?” “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, Rabbi,” Hymie replies. “Although if I’m honest,” he adds, “I must admit that I really only have to learn the first part of every sentence.” “Why’s that?” asks Rabbi Goldbloom. “Because,” says Hymie, “Becky always finishes my sentences for me.”

Hymie is reading the paper. “Look at this,” he says to Becky. “Police arrest two boys, one for drinking battery liquid, the other for smoking fireworks. They charged the first boy and let the other one off.”