Confessions of a master criminal

Rufus Hound asserts his innocence

I recently took a joke written by Norman Lovett, and told it on television. ‘No man is an island, except when he's in the bath.’

He had said it before me.

I didn't write it.

It follows that I stole it.

There he was sitting at home, suffering my presentation of The Isle of Wight Festival, when he heard me tell his joke. Outraged, he fired off an irritated missive to Chortle which, in turn (as the only media outlet that gives a rat’s ass about this sort of thing), made note of this complaint at the end of it's article The World's Biggest Joke Thief.

There are some things I'd like to explain to you, dear reader and I hope you have time to read them. If not, I'm sunk. I am a comedian and have been called a joke thief. Better that I had been branded a Salem Witch. A B-Wing nonce. Frankenstein's Monster. So, I beg you, give me a chance to clear my name before rounding up the lynch mob.

While introducing myself on one of the seven live IoW shows I hosted over the weekend I said – approximately– this: ‘They say no man is an island, except when he's in the bath. Well, I'm not in a bath, but I am on an island and I am a man called Rufus Hound.’ It was one of those sort of knowing links, where the clumsiness of the wording matched with a sincere, earnest delivery is meant to inform the viewer that I'm clearly not taking it very seriously.

Please note, however, that I'm not telling Norman Lovett's joke as an end in itself. There was no pause for laughter after the initial sentence. No knowing smirk. And there's a reason for that.

I didn't think it was a joke.

I'm sorry Mr Lovett if you're reading this. I'm sure in your hands/mouth it's an absolute dazzler, but to me it's just something my Nan used to say. One of those sort of familial witticisms filed away with ‘Up the stairs to Bedfordshire’ and ‘I'm so hungry I could eat a horse and go back for the jockey’. Whether she heard Mr Lovett tell it and repeated it to my young ears I cannot say. She died in 1992 when I was 12, so maybe, if Norman is able to date when he wrote the joke we'll be able to find out whether my Nan was a joke thief too. Oh god! The horror of it! A shame-etched lineage of gag stealers? Oh, for the sweet release of suicide!

Thing is, had Mr Lovett contacted me directly, I would have explained this. It's not hard to contact me directly. We both work in live comedy, there's enough peer cross-over that he could have phoned me had he so wished. I would have apologised out of sheer awkwardness. I would also have explained.

Instead, this perceived transgression is bought to the fore on the biggest comedy website in the UK under the heading The World's Biggest Joke Thief. Now, clearly that headline wasn't referring to me. I know that, but the semantics borne of this juxtaposition are deeply offensive. Or to put it another way (for those who haven't done media studies A-level) Chortle basically said ‘There's this Italian bloke whose stealing loads of people's material. Y'know, like Rufus Hound does.’

I wasn't contacted about this story beforehand. I wasn't asked for a quote or an explanation. So Norm cries ‘Thief!’ and Stevey Chortle [Steve Bennett, Chortle’s editor] yells ‘Quick! Tell everyone’ without first checking whether anything's gone. Which I guess wouldn't be so bad if the penalty for that particular crime in this comedic province weren't having the word ‘pariah’ branded on my forehead.

This is a tiny incident, but I'm pretty hurt by it. I take material theft seriously, as I think most comedians do. I had no idea that what I'd thought was a ‘saying’, someone else thought was ‘their material’. None at all.

However, I'm angry too that Chortle saw fit to publish it in the context that they did.

In a nutshell then:

Mr Lovett: Sorry. A misunderstanding. You shall never again hear those words from my lips. Rest assured. That said, if my family has appropriated any other material of yours which emerges from my subconscious on live television, I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss it before you alert the global media.

Mr Bennett: If you don't understand that, in the world of live comedy, mud sticks and that you have just a little responsibility to double-check before you fling it, go fuck yourself.