Encore, encore
THE rest-home for old jokes which serves the Financial Times for a diary column has found a distinguished inmate. This is Saki's joke, from his short story 'Reginald on Besetting Sins': 'She was a good cook as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went.' The FT attributes it to the report of a Surrey golf club. This saves crediting Saki, though since he has been dead for 74 years and his jokes are out of copyright, it would cost nothing. The oldest inhabitant I have seen in the FT's rest-home is the story, attri- buted to a City barber's shop, about the customer who was asked how he would like his hair cut, and answered: 'In silence.' I believe that this goes back to classical times, and possibly to Plautus (BC254– 184). I offer a bottle of champagne to the scholar who can verify my reference, and a magnum to the humorist who can spot (or plant) an even older joke in the FT diary.
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