Ice lolly joke winner wasn't entirely original

It has proved a successful PR stunt to put the LOL back into lolly... but a competition to find new jokes to go on ice-lolly sticks has been hit by claims that the £5,000 winning entry was not original.

Charlie Thomas, a Newcastle scaffolder by day and part of a Rat Pack tribute act by night, scooped the top prize for his gag: ‘Who is in charge of the hankies? The hankie-chief!’

But although rules for the competition stated that entries ‘must be your own original creation’, comedian Ross Wagman has discovered the winning gag in a 30-year-old joke book.

Wagman, who unsuccessfully entered the competition, googled the winning line and found it was contained in the Ha Ha Bonk Book, which was published in 1982.

The competition was run by Cadburys Dairy Milk, which is reviving the lolly-stick jokes that were phased out from 1988. The gag been engraved on to a solid gold lolly stick, worth £10,000, which has been put into a random Cadbury Dairy Milk ice cream for someone to discover.

A spokesman for the competition said that comedy critic Bruce Dessau reviewed the shortlist, pointed out that no members of the public contested the originality of the joke, and insisted they undertook an 'extensive Google search of all submissions' to the competition.

In the press release to announce the winning gag, marketing manager Jenny Bostock said: ‘We are proud to be reviving a great summer time tradition and what better way to do it than with the help of the nation. Twitter has re-energised our passion for joke telling and sharing. We want to bring back the fun to ice cream and put a smile on our customer faces.’

On winning, Thomas said: ‘As a child, the jokes were as much of a treat as the lolly itself. I entered the competition to share some of my silliest jokes and I’m delighted that I have won!’

Writing in Chortle’s Correspondents section today, Wagman admits that Thomas most likely came up with his gag independently of the joke book.

He said: ‘Originality is quite difficult when it comes to puns. We may have an ever-increasing vocabulary but moulding those words into a coherent set up and a humorous punchline may occasionally result in two people thinking of the same joke at the same time or recreating someone else’s you may never have heard of.’

Indeed, others in Cadbury’s top 10 have a familiarity. Various versions of the second-favourite joke ‘Why are crabs trying to take over the sea? Because they're shellfish’ can be found online, while third placed: ‘What did the buffalo say to his child when he was leaving for uni? Bison’ is on an old joke website called Squigly’s Playhouse, attributed to a nine-year-old American

Comedian Tony Cowards came fourth with his apparently original line: ‘Where did Noah keep all of the freshwater fish? In his multi-storey Carp Ark’

The competition was rub via Twitter by Frederick’s Dairies, who make and sell the ice cream lollies under licence for Cadbury.

Published: 25 May 2012