First things first, Normie boy. Get all your ducks in a row, is what he said. Jax reckons that getting all your ducks in a row is the first rule of comedy because it’s when you figure out the order of how you tell your jokes. The first joke is the most important one, because if you don’t get people laughing from the start it’s like pushing dog poo uphill from there, he says. And the last joke is the second most important one because that’s probably the only one anyone will actually remember. Then you’ve just got to make all the ones in between fit in and be as funny as you can along the way.

I guess I kind of knew Jax wasn’t really talking to me and it was probably just my brain playing a not too funny joke on me, but I did have a quick look over my shoulder anyway. Because I couldn’t help it and also, one never knows. Anyhow he wasn’t there so I started sorting out all the bits of paper and Post-its from the Comedy Pot so I could get all my ducks in a row. Some of them just had one word, like doughnut or chicken, and I had to think really hard to try and remember what they meant. But some of them were so good I didn’t need to try at all. Like the back of a bus ticket that said, Land’s End, asthma puffer, old guy with sausage roll, fart. That one was easy because me and Jax had agreed on the bus home that it had been one of the coolest and funniest days of our whole school holidays.

After a while of unfolding and sorting the notes I had piles of funny, really funny, extra funny and maybe not so funny after all and it was getting quite hard to keep them all separate. Every time there was a bit of wind a few pieces of paper blew onto another pile or onto the floor of the car and I’d have to sort them again. Which was pretty annoying, and also the itching was getting quite bad so what I really wanted to do more than anything else was just sit there and scratch my skin to smithereens.

I knew I was what Jax calls getting my Y-fronts in a tangle and I was concentrating so hard on trying not to let them that I didn’t even notice that Leonard had come back. He was leaning against the side of the car that was parked beside the Austin and said, what you need are some bulldog clips, young man, and then he started rummaging around in his coat pocket. He pulled out a notepad, his iPhone, heaps of pencils, some paracetamol, a few plasters, a manky packet of Mentos and then, just when I thought, well, the next thing coming out of there’s going to be a kitten, or a ham sandwich, would you believe it, out came six mini bulldog clips attached to each other in a little chain.