Way back in the mists of the late 60s/early 70s, my old mate Barrie Roberts used to be in a band called the Songsmiths. One of the guys, Miff, was utterly hopeless at telling jokes, but he'd tell a long rambling story while everyone else was tuning up:

Somewhere in the middle of a big industrial area of a city is an ice cube factory. One morning they load up a lorry with ice cubes. When it's so full they can't get a single ice cube more on top, they take a big tarpaulin and cover the load. They tie the tarp down at the corners and at points along its sides. Finally the driver collects his delivery sheets, climbs into his cab and drives off through the gates. He drives throught the narrow city streets onto the main road. he drives on out of the city and into the countryside. He turns off onto a narrow country lane that winds this way and that, under low tree branches; and the tarp start to come untied at one corner. The road winds around the side of a hill, and comes to a bridge over the mouth of a railway tunnel. As it lurches over the bridge, an ice cube breaks loose from the load: it slides down over the side of the lorry, bounces off the parapet, and ... disappears into the dark mouth of the tunnel ...

By the time he'd finished, with interruptions for songs and so on, everyone would think this was yet another of Miff's unfortunate jokes that had flopped; but what the hell, it's the interval anyway!

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Some time in the second set, someone else would start a long while-the-others-are-tuning-up, interrupted-by-songs story:

A train is just starting to move off, when a man comes running up th platform, and just manages to get the door of the last compartment open and fling himself in. It's one of those old trains with no corridor, so once he's in, he's stuck there. The only other occupant of the compartment is an old lady with a little dog. The dog is very frisky, and keeps running around. The man takes out a pipe, fills it and lights it; he's smoking one of those horrible smelly smoky tobaccos that's outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

"Young man, this a no-smoking compartment, and I'll thank you to put out that disgusting pipe," says the old girl.

"Certainly madam, if you'll kindly keep your mutt under control."

A long frosty silence follows, in which they glare at each other, the dog becomes ever more excited, and the compartment slowly fogs up.

Without warning, the train enters a tunnel; the lights fail. In the darkness a scuffel breaks out, and when the train emerges into sunlight again, the door is open and the dog and the pipe are nowhere to be seen. They both grab at the communcation cord, and when the train stops they jump down and run back along the track. The dog emerges from the mouth of the tunnel, and what do you think he's got in his mouth? That's right: it's ...












... the ice cube!