The Joey Bishop Show (ABC) 1961-1969
Shown: Host Joey Bishop

On The Joey Bishop Show last night I heard two jokes. Maybe riddle is a better word than joke, because these aren’t laugh out loud funny, yet interesting.

There’s a builder who always does a perfect job. When he finishes a project, he never has anything left. He knows his work so well that he orders just the right amount of all materials.

Except one time he finishes a building, and he has a brick left, one single brick. What does he do with it? He throws it out.

(If you don’t get it, give it a minute. I promise you will get it.)

A woman on a train has a little dog. It’s eating a pickle. A man, a stranger, sharing the compartment with her has an aversion to pickles. He can’t stand to watch the dog sucking on a pickle. “Lady,” he says, “can’t you feed that dog something besides a pickle? It’s making me nauseated to watch it suck on that damned pickle.”

But the woman refuses to do anything. She says the dog likes pickles.

When the train stops at a station, the man grabs the pickle from the dog’s mouth and throws it out the window. The little dog hops out the window after it. The woman is hysterical, afraid the train will leave before she can get her dog. But it comes trotting down the aisle to the compartment. What does it have in its mouth? The brick.

Joey Bishop’s sitcom ran four seasons, 1961-1965, and is available from Netflix. Many people probably remember him better for hosting late night talk shows, both his own and guest hosting others, or for his part in Ocean’s 11. He died in Newport Beach, California, in 2007 at the age of 89.