An Aggers /Johnston moment

For many the funniest-ever broadcast was when Jonathan Agnew and Brian Johnston lost it in a fit of giggles after Aggers said Ian Botham could not quite his leg over. I later found out that the producer was less than amused and the two were never paired again. Yet even today when I hear it I dissolve into laughter. I also heard when Johnners was in coma they played him that tape.

My late father and his father could never finish a joke as they found the punch line so funny they were both helpless in laughter long before they reached it.

In my father’s case he would emit a high-pitched siren-type noise that unfailingly brought the house down.

We were studying the difficult subject of the Spanish past tense as there are three of them: a simple past perfect, the imperfect and a historic descriptive tense.

Needless to say the class could not work which one was appropriate. The exercise was to provide the police with a statement about a theft.

One sentence was “he grabbed my handbag”.

My neighbour, a lady with whom I am on good terms and would describe as  a”laugh”, said “The best I can do is ‘he grabbed my bolsa …’” (Spanish for handbag).  I replied that I hoped it was not too painful.

This made us dissolve into peals of laughter. She recovered but I did not. The more I tried to eliminate from my mind the silly joke the more I laughed, especially as  I could hardly explain it to the class.

No doubt at school Teacher would have me to leave the class but I was supposed to be an adult now.

Even on the journey home I had difficulty in controlling the wheel.

I dropped in on Bob Tickler whose p/a Polly was visiting.

I told them the puerile joke but my consolation was they thought it very funny.