A variant of this joke was one of many in the repertoire of Carlos 'Curly' Gosse.   Curly ran a folk club called 'The Student Prince' in London's Soho in the early 1960s.

As far as I can recollect, in Curly's version of the story the emissary to the Pope was a unemployed ex-tailor's apprentice, and the three silent questions and answers were also slightly different. But the outcome of the interview and the punch-line ('Then he took out his lunch, and I took out my lunch!') were the same

Curly never sang or played an instrument - though he usually had the ever-reliable Martin Windsor on his team - but he was an excellent MC, with a wonderful repertoire of comical stories. Some of them were almost long enough to be monologues - perhaps if he'd played his cards right, he might have become a rival to Billy Connolly?

His club was running Saturday/Sunday all-night folk sessions some while before Les Cousins started up, but they were terminated after he got evicted from the club's original location (to make room for some fruit machines) and was unable to find suitable alternative premises.

On the last occasion I saw Curly, he was running a hoopla stall at the annual St Giles Fair in Oxford, and still in very good form. But soon after that I heard that he'd emigrated to New Zealand.

Are there any other Mudcatters out there who remember him?

Wassail!