Ronnie Scott - these are the jokes...
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Ronnie Scott - these are the jokes...
Anybody who visited Ronnie Scott's more than a few times quickly learnt his repertoire of jokes. In his role as club compere they were delivered night after night in his droll deadpan style. He reckoned they got funnier the more he told them, some visitors to the club reckoned they had heard some of them for twenty years or more. Below are just a few...

An old favourite that usually appeared after his band had finished a loud up tempo number that was greeted with indifference by the assembled patrons:
You don't seem very impressed. Why don't you all hold hands and see if you can contact the living?......It's the first time I've seen dead people smoke!

When the drink/driving legislation was introduced the equipment used by the police was known as "a breathalyser". Any driver suspected of being over the alcohol limit was required to blow into a bag where the alcohol level would be checked. Ronnie used to send patrons on their way at the end of the evening with the warning:
Before you leave the police have asked me to remind you that 'breathalyser tests are now in operation'..... So if you're thinking of drinking and driving tonight.......don't breathe...

He strongly disliked tenor sax player Stan Getz who he regarded, of all the American stars to play at the club, as the most difficult and demanding musician he ever had to deal with. He had several anti-Getz jokes:
I've been suffering from a slipped disc.......I got it bending over backwards for too long.....trying to please Stan Getz...

We've got a sensational new group playing at the club for the next two weeks....tenor sax player Stan Getz is back and is joined in the front line by the jazz violinist Stuff Smith.....It's called the Getz stuffed quintet...


The club, particularly at Gerrard Street, always struggled financially and in the early days could not afford the American jazz stars. The British musicians did not always draw the crowds and Ronnie would do a variation of the following routine:
Actually you should have been here last week Somebody should have been here last week.....We had the bouncers chucking them in.......A guy rang up to ask what time the show started and we said "What time can you get here?" .... the band was playing 'Tea For One' and the audience was on it's foot.....It was two hours before we found out the cashier was dead.....

The staff were always likely to draw Ronnie's attention:
Anyway in just a few moments whatsisname will be back on the stand. Meanwhile our waiters and waitresses will be pleased to take you - er - to take care of you. We do, as a matter of fact, have six very good waiters and waitresses in the Club. Between them they have a job opening a bag of crisps, but they're great...there's one of our waiters moving.. ..that's Enrico, moving slowly but moving....Enrico's Italian - doesn't speak any English. He came to this country three years ago and couldn't speak a word of English. Took a job in a Jewish restaurant....thought he was learning English.. ..now he speaks great Yiddish and Italian....but no English...
He got married three weeks ago and already he can hear the patter of tiny feet...his mother-in-law's a dwarf. He was telling me he had a row with his wife recently and she said "what would you do if you came home and found a man in bed with me?"...and Enrico said, "I'd kick his guide dog"...not bad for an Italian...
Then we had a Hungarian waiter working here recently....he didn't understand the social security system and he used to stick Green Shield stamps on his national insurance card...he got nicked for it - the judge gave him six months....and a tea set...


Fellow musicians were always likely to be the butt of Ronnie's jokes. The 'Melody Maker', a weekly musical newspaper, used to hold an annual readers poll where readers were invited to vote for their top musicians in many categories, including a separate category for each instrument. I remember a Jazz Couriers show in 1957 when Ronnie solemnly introduced the band members to the audience:
....on piano we have Terry Shannon.....his claim to fame is that in a recent readers poll carried out by one of our weekly musical comics, Terry tied for 12th place in the piano section... with Winifred Atwell (older readers will remember that Winifred Atwell, although a fine pianist, was a musical variety turn who used to play popular tunes in a 'honky tonk' style. Ronnie's information though was factually correct - they both got 43 votes).

Even the club itself did not escape. The food served at the Club was not always to everones liking and the decor became progressively worse, there was never a lot of cleaning or refurbishing during the clubs long tenure at Frith Street. Of the food Ronnie used to say, only half joking: "A thousand flies can't be wrong." Then there was his often heard joke in which he would refer to the club as "just like home - filthy and full of strangers"