Sideswipe: March 19: Teacher asks for best gag

Teacher George Pointon asked a Year 1 classes to tell a joke.

Here is his analysis, shared on Twitter:

Alice - "Why did the cow cross the road? - To go to the Movies". Great timing.

It also got a big laugh from the class. She is still raw as a comic but certainly showing a lot of promise. 8/10.

Katie - "Why did the cow cross the road? - Movies". Wanted a slice of Alice's pie. Copied her completely but with less conviction. No style or character. Even got the punch line wrong…but I appreciate the attempt. 2/10.

Jack - "What did the toilet say? - Poo". Poo joke. Too easy. The class erupted in a fit of laughter however I found it cheap , lazy and crass. He'll probably end up enjoying Mrs Brown's Boys. Bang average. 5/10.

Frankie - "Where did the poo poo go? - in the bum". And so begins the onslaught of faecal matter gags. This one got less of a laugh but still a solid ripple. Frankie's confident approach is what sold it for me, however, still a poo joke. 4/10

Ravi - "Why did the skeleton not go to the party? Because he had noBODY to go with". Clearly a recycled gag from a parent or uncle. Didn't matter to me. Confident style. He even had inflection in the word "BODY". Kid's an absolute class act. Look out for Ravi. 9/10.

Toby and Wendy - "You say it" "No you Say it" "you" "No You". Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, Cannon and Bull, Reeves and Mortimer. Expect Toby and Wendy to be in that category soon. No joke, but the stage presence and comedic timing was second to none. Ace. 10/10.

Ben - "What did the chicken not want to be? - A chicken nugget" Factual. Thought provoking. Witty. Would be excellent on the panel of Have I Got News for You. Made us all think about the greed and over consumption of mankind. We laughed but overall we learned. 8/10.

Great company to work for

History of the most famous pasta

Spaghetti (little strings) was being made in Sicily by at least the 1100s, but it wouldn't achieve ubiquity until it arrived in the United States centuries later. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, spaghetti was one of few Italian ingredients available stateside. The millions of Italians immigrating to America at this time also had access to meat and canned tomatoes, which is how spaghetti and meatballs became a staple. Pedantic gourmands will tell you that actual Italians would never eat the two dishes together, and they're probably right, but the story of pasta and meatballs isn't quite that simple. In Abruzzo, for instance, a traditional dish pairs pasta with pallottine, which are a type of small meatball. According to David Gentilcore, professor of history at the University of Leicester, as early as 1632, a comic theatre character says that he dreams "of a big dish of macaroni with meatballs on top." (via Mental Floss)

Adults never let you forget either

I was making a bacon and egg pie when my boyfriend asked me to help him with something.  I put the bacon that I was chopping up in the fridge, gave him a hand in what he was doing, then carried on baking the pie, completely forgetting about the bacon in the fridge.  Over 30 years later and I still get reminded by him about my egg pie.