Put simply, if you thought of Mitt Romney as a joke figure bound to lose in November and soon to be forgotten, think again.
When my career dived in the early 90s I was a joke figure, but then I became one of the most sampled musicians around.
Attlee had a modest mustache and came from a modest family, and had a modest demeanor so much so that his modesty made him almost a joke figure.
His open and indiscriminate defiance of Mr Corbyn dismayed right-leaning sympathisers, who feared he was becoming a joke figure, as much as it infuriated leadership loyalists.
A year after he was defeated, shorn of his world heavyweight title, and reduced to something of a joke figure, the Hayemaker is back – and in the mood to do battle a Klitschko brother all over again.
IF SARAH PALIN were only the Saturday Night Live joke figure that she is often seen as being, her decision to resign as governor of Alaska would hardly have been the subject of front-page headlines and instant newsflashes.
Yet, as Season 20 opened, the show was doing precisely what a year earlier it had warned against: treating Garrison's Trump as an absurd, borderline-sympathetic joke figure, portraying him and Clinton as identical dangers, a choice between a "giant douche" and a "turd sandwich".
