How a joke about Jane Russell's 38" bust influences British comedy to this day

Ever heard the one about the Hollywood bombshell Jane Russell and the game of pontoon? No? Well, it is being described as one of the most influential jokes in British comedy.

In fact historians of British comedy speculate that had the joke had never been written the likes of characters such as Steptoe, Basil Fawlty and the Office’s David Brent might never have been created.

The joke, known as “the Jane Russell Pontoon sketch” was submitted by the writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson to a TV producer in 1951.

On the strength of it the producer teamed up Galton and Simpson with the comic Tony Hancock and the trio went on to create some of the archetypes of British sitcom which continue to define the genre to this day.

A rare recording of the Jane Russell Pontoon Sketch - a play on the size of her ample bust and the popular card game - was unearthed last year and was played for an audience for the first time in 65 years in Birmingham on Saturday.

The joke is credited with such importance because it provided an early breakthrough in the career of Galton and Simpson, whose later work - particularly Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe and Son - went on to influence later generations of comics, such as Paul Merton, David Mitchell, Robert Webb and Steve Coogan.

Amateur comedy historian Tristan Brittain-Dissont, who discovered the lost recording, explained: “From that meeting we have Hancock’s Half Hour, and then Steptoe And Son. And you can draw an arc from Hancock all the way through comedy history, through Steptoe, Captain Mainwaring, Basil Fawlty, Alan Partridge, even to David Brent.

“And therefore in my opinion this is one of the most important jokes ever written.”

The gag was written by hand and sent to the BBC in the summer of 1951, where producer-performer Derek Roy bought it for five shillings for his radio show Happy Go Lucky.

It sparked a collaboration between Roy and the writing duo which led to them being appointed staff writers after the Happy Go Lucky’s previous team was fired amid falling ratings.

Hancock - still hailed as one of the most influential comics Britain has produced - had a regular sketch on the programme, called The Eager Beavers.

At a rehearsal of Galton and Simpson’s first full-length show, at the Paris Theatre on November 11 1951, Tony Hancock turned to the pair and said, “very funny.”

It is not known whether Roy ever used the joke on Happy Go Lucky. The recording played yesterday was made at a performance of Variety Ahoy!, a radio show which toured naval bases performing live for seamen, on January 22 1952.

Although the story of the Jane Russell Pontoon joke was well-known among comedy historians, no recording of it was known to exist until Mr Brittain-Dissont found an acetate disc in the British Library early last year, while trawling through a collection Derek Roy bequeathed to the Library upon his death.

The joke itself was originally used in a longer sketch called Captain Noseblower, set on a pirate ship.

In it the crew are discussing how to kill time and one suggests they play a game of Jane Russell Pontoon.

His shipmate asks: “Is that the same as ordinary pontoon?”

To which the first replies: “It is, but you need 38 to bust.”

Russell, who starred in the Howard Hughes western The Outlaw, and played alongside Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, was one of the first global sex symbols on account of her curvaceous figure.

Or as Bob Hope put it at the time: “Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without using your hands.”

The short clip was played at Birmingham University, in Hancock’s home town, as part of a day-long event which also includes the screening of two lost episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour and several 1970s recordings of TV hit Crossroads previously  thought to have been  destroyed.