Well - no matter how many times I have heard "Debate at the Oxford Union" by Gerrard Hoffnung I still find it amusing - delivery is everything. Paddy's Sick Note is derivative and sadly it does remove one or two of the carefully crafted intermediate humourous details. But I still enjoy it, not the least because it is so compact and almost complete. As a writer of humourous songs - I can tell you it is verry rare to get a subject that one can pack so many jokes into a single concept and still be proud of the result. My Knittershanty is as close as I got and that took three of us brainstorming over coffee. But on the plus side it was done in 2 hours. Which often is the case. You can sweat over things too much. And the phrase "polishing a turd" is the warning.

FWIW Hoffnung did not originate the concept of the "Sick Note" but he did squeeze just about every possible scenario from the single idea without adding additional concepts. And because he called it the "Pile of Bricks" it didn't telegraph the punchlne - as the song does.