Did I write this joke?

Has anyone ever come up with a joke and thought 'did I come up with this? or is it a joke I heard that burrowed it's way into the back of my brain?'

Do you just go with it anyway?

There's this thing called Google...

Well obviously, but that's no guarantee

It's a pretty fair bet that if it's already on Google you didn't write it.

Again, fairly obvious, but on the flip side not everyone's stand up has been transcribed, not every script Googleable.

I guess there's nothing you can do beyond that though...

Google doesn't store every joke/comment made by a comedian. I sometimes do the same thing and get to the point where I can't remember if I made the joke/comment up or if I'd heard it before. I imagine this was the kind of answer you were looking for.

Quite a lot of jokes are formulaic-you might very well be rewriting a joke that has been told many times before...

I was very sad to see chillerama steal my Anne Frankenstein pun

Quote: PurpleRonnie @ April 2 2013, 6:41 PM BST

Google doesn't store every joke/comment made by a comedian. I sometimes do the same thing and get to the point where I can't remember if I made the joke/comment up or if I'd heard it before. I imagine this was the kind of answer you were looking for.

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Yes, exactly, thank you Ronnie!

And yeah I guess most jokes are variations on a few themes. And I guess nearly everyone has sort of nicked stuff at some stage, be it consciously or unconsciously. Even anti-plagiarism cleric Stewart Lee...

"There was a <being> and he had a <thing> and one day he went into a <building> and this <event> happened and it was very funny."

There y'are the universal template for a very large number of jokes.

Thanks Bill, yeah I think you're right. It's something I get massively hung up on, but can't let it get in the way!

Post near enough anything in Critique and it is a fair bet someone will comment that it reminds them of something (usually when you look into it something almost entirely dissimilar.)

But yeah, a good joke is a bit like a good tune, the first time it pops into your head you assume someone must have thought of it first.

There was a dolphin and he had a thirst, so he went into a bar and said to the barmaid "Pour me a Beer, please" and the mermaid said "Don't be daft young Tursiops, beer won't pour under water!".

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh deary, deary me.

Bill. Hang your head in shame.

Then there was the Dolphin who was unfit for Porpoise.