It proved the same in Royal Court revivals of the old British jokes, Box And Cox, or the European ironies of The Fire Raisers, or the call-up humour of Henry Livings Nil Carborundumm at the Arts.
John Osborne, in his autobiography, wrote that "Arden became an in-house joke for box office disaster," and it is estimated that between 1956 and 1961 the Royal Court made about £50,000 from Osborne's plays but lost nearly £15,000 on Arden's.
"I joke that boxing was my way into the ghetto".
(All possible jokes about boxes, not to mention shades of grey, had been made by the end of the queue to the ladies in the dinner interval, so I will resist).
"The biggest enemy we face is indifference," Colquhoun had told me, and these words ring in my ears as I observe the next generation of anti-abortion campaigners, making jokes around boxes of plastic model foetuses.
The pre-cooked tins of pork meat are the stuff of jokes, lunch boxes, wartime memories and, here in South Korea, a low-key, national love affair.
Mr. Faranda said the current situation reminds him of what happened in the 1990s when oversaturation in clubs ("joke in the box" is how Robin Williams described them) and on television hurt business.
(You can make the Box joke here).
Even the preternaturally prepped and prolific Neil Patrick Harris seemed affected, reduced at times to a small figure on a big stage making "good job" remarks to performers and attempting to carry a long-running joke about a box.
Cards Against Humanity – What do you get when you put 550 horrible jokes in a box and make a bunch of people tell them to each other?
