Dirty Diary

This year's award went to Ken Cheng for this beauty: “I'm not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change.” In fairness to Cheng, he did say he was surprised to have won the award – a sentiment he probably shares with everybody else on the planet who has heard his joke – and admitted it usually gets more of a groan than a laugh. Funny that. Or not. Whatever.

What is clear is who the award for best joke on the Fringe should actually have gone to: all those pranksters in the audience who thought it would be hilarious to vote for Ken Cheng and keep up the fine tradition of the winning joke being totally unfunny and (in his case) groan-worthy. They have shown real comic invention and should be rewarded for their effort. If I see Dave, I'll tell him so.

As for me, I'd have looked to the third-placed joke for the eventual winner. It came from Alexei Sayle. “I've given up asking rhetorical questions,” he said. “What's the point?”

ToysRUseless

THE way he tells it, my dad's favourite childhood toys were (in no particular order) a gird and cleek, a bogie and an old cardboard shoebox he'd fill with bricks and put into the road for cars to run over while he and his brother watched out of the tenement window.

Sadly none of these have found their way onto a new set of stamps from the Royal Mail which supposedly show the UK's 10 favourite British toys from the last 100 years. Among them are the Space Hopper, Stickle Bricks, the Sindy doll, Action Man, Fuzzy Felt, Meccano and something called Spirograph.

I say "supposedly" because looking at them I really do wonder how anybody had any sort of childhood at all before Playstations and X-Boxes came along to send seratonin levels sky-high with 42-inch screen rapid-fire violence.

I mean I can remember playing with an Action Man and it was absolutely useless. Couldn't stand up, couldn't sit down, didn't go on fire properly and never said the stuff you wanted it to when you pulled the string (like: "Can we have fish fingers for tea?" or “Help! Help! These people aren't my parents!”).

I can remember playing with Stickle Bricks, too, and they were equally useless. At least Lego bits didn't actually pierce the skin when you stood on them. And don't get me started on Space Hoppers – yes they did take up space (usually in the corner of the garage, where they glowered at you like evil, over-sized pumpkins) but they certainly couldn't hop. Roll on 2117 and some stamps showing some proper toys.

Hashtag numpty

THE Latin phrase for “buyer beware” is “caveat emptor”, as the classically-educated among you will know. But if we want a Latin admonition for those people who splatter images of their lives all over social media, how about “caveat Instagram hashtag usor”? Works for me.

I'm not sure if Latin was a subject Louise Linton excelled at or even studied during her time at Edinburgh's super-posh Fettes College, revealed last week to be the most expensive school in Scotland. If not, here's a rough translation in words even her new husband's new boss would understand: “Be careful what you post – and go easy on those hashtags”.

Linton's husband (of 64 days) is Steve Mnuchin, an alumni of Yale University, a former partner at Goldman Sachs and now the US Treasury Secretary. His boss is the guy with the hair and the little hands. Linton, by the way, has previously found herself in a spot of bother over a self-published memoir of her gap year in Africa which drew ire from, well, everyone really, but particularly Africans and especially the Zambian High Commission in London. Now she has the internet in uproar again, and this time it's all because of an Instagram post.

It started early last week when she put up a picture of herself stepping off an official, blue and white United States Of America airliner in Kentucky with Mnuchen in tow. Fair enough. But not content with that, she also unleashed a slew of hashtag-heavy brand endorsements in the form of an explanatory caption (you can do that on Instagram) and then embarked on a war of words with someone who had the temerity to reply (you can do that too). “Great #daytrip to #Kentucky!” Linton wrote. “#nicest #people #beautiful #countryside #rolandmouret pants #tomford sunnies, #hermesscarf #valentinorockstudheels #valentino #usa.”

Her sparring partner was the woman who replied with: “Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable” (the “we” in this case being the American taxpayer, who foot the bill for all those journeys people take on official government airliners). Linton then lashed out in a lengthy, sarcastic and high-handed reply that enraged even normally sober commentator The New Yorker. “In a few aggrieved sentences,” it wrote, “Linton managed to frame her husband’s three-hundred-million-dollar net worth as a burden, her six months in Washington as harrowing public servitude, and an ordinary American as a contemptible member of the economic underclass.”

Linton has since apologised. Don't know what the Latin is for “too little, too late”, but like the man in the toga says: be careful what you post – and go easy on those hashtags.

Ennui or not ennui

HERE'S a conundrum to chew on tomorrow with your colleagues if you're lucky enough to have a boss who lets you down tools long enough for a flat white and a brownie. We're all being told we're going to have to work longer and retire later than our parents, right? (State pension age is rapidly heading towards 70: blame the Tories.) And the chances are that when we're doing this work, it'll be for wages which are effectively decreasing in real terms, right? Well here's the thing: on top of that kick in the teeth, the headline claim on a new report from a human resource firm says that people start hating their jobs when they hit 35. Thirty-five! Factor in the amount of time it can take school-leavers and graduates to find a job that pays anything close to a living wage, and the window between puppy-dog enthusiasm and cynical ennui closes even further. I reckon if luck's against you, you've got about 18 months of job satisfaction to look forward to. In which case it's probably better to give up all thought of work completely. As Alexei Sayle would say: what's the point?