But the thing is, all the jokes me and Jax wrote or collected were made for two people and it was pretty hard for me to have to do both parts, no matter how many times I could hear Jax telling me to count it in and wait for it, Normie boy. It just wasn’t the same on my own, and when I looked in the mirror to see what I looked like when I was telling a joke all I could see was a little kid in a big jacket with bits of his skin falling off. And an empty space where the funny guy used to stand.

Jax would have been able to do both parts easily, though, and I know that because he actually did do it once. It was when he was trying to help me get my timing right for this really cool comedy sketch we made up about what would happen if the doughnut had been invented square instead of round. And if you want a laugh, think about that for a minute. Jax was trying to explain when would be the funniest time for me to come in with my bits and so he kept on jumping from one spot to the other, pretending to be me saying my part and then really being him saying his part. It was so funny when he was putting on a squeaky voice and doing the me bits that we cracked up so much I nearly peed and he had to get his puffer out because he lost his breath. But he never in a million years would have imagined that I’d be the one trying to do his part one day. And neither did I.

I knew that if Jax was really there with me in the Caramel Suite there’s no way he would have let me give up, though. He’d have made me keep on practicing and practicing until I got it kind of right. He’d be saying stuff like, pause for effect, Normie! Paaauuuuse for effeeeeect! Jax can stretch out a pause for effect better than anyone, and the longer he stares and says nothing, the funnier it gets. But whenever I pause for effect it just sounds like I’ve forgotten the next joke. Which is actually true some of the time.

And so, because I knew Jax would want me to, I kept on practicing to try and get it right. I put all my Post-it notes in order, with the funniest jokes at the beginning and the end and the unfunniest ones in the middle, and then I tried. I really did. I tried loads and loads of times, because practice makes perfect, Jax says.

First I told every single joke in a different accent, which sounded lame and stupid. Then I tried making weird faces in the mirror when I talked, which just looked weird. Then I tried running from one side of the room to the other while I told jokes, which just puffed me out and then I couldn’t talk properly. No matter what I did, all I could hear was a bunch of random jokes floating around the room then landing on the floor and flipping about like a load of fish out of water. Even the best first and last ones, which are most important. And all the time, I just knew that I wasn’t being funny. I was being the opposite of funny. I was being totally unfunny.