Whitby Doggerel Bank When I was a child, I was much amused by this little rhyme that my dad used to recite. Here’s to my true love, Big Joe White. Went out winching every night, First with me, then with another. To hell with him for a two-faced bugger. It doesn’t rhyme properly, it doesn’t entirely make sense, but I found it hilarious. It has the hit-and-miss quality of what we used to call naïve painting. The naivety, the lack of subtlety in invective, the imperfect rhyming, and of course the fall-flat-on-your-face bathos of the last line all contribute to its being funny. And as Joseph Bologna, playing a thinly disguised Sid Caesar, says in the film My Favourite Year , ‘In my business, we don’t cut funny.’ Remember that the p...