Dirty Johnny

Norm Macdonald loved old jokes. Really old jokes. The kind of jokes your grandfather told, the kind that circulated on playgrounds before the internet existed, the kind that proper comedians were supposed to have outgrown.

The "Dirty Johnny" format was one of his favorites: a classroom setting, a teacher asking students to demonstrate vocabulary, and a troublesome child named Johnny whose contributions take the lesson somewhere inappropriate.

In Norm's hands, these jokes became something else entirely. He didn't just tell them—he inhabited them. The setup would stretch on, accumulating unnecessary details. The teacher became a real character. Johnny's classmates gave answers that seemed to go on forever. The audience would begin to wonder if there was a punchline at all.

Then: the punchline. Often crude. Usually simple. Occasionally the kind of thing a ten-year-old would think was hilarious.

The magic was in the gap. Norm—this intelligent, well-read, clearly sophisticated comedian—was telling a joke from a joke book for children. And he was telling it like it was the most important thing in the world. The commitment was so complete that the audience had to reevaluate: maybe the joke was actually brilliant? Maybe they'd missed something?

Or maybe the point was simpler: comedy doesn't have to be smart. It doesn't have to be original. It just has to be funny. And sometimes, a dirty joke that's been told a million times is funny. Norm was willing to bet his reputation on that.

"And that's when the teacher fainted."

The punchline didn't matter. What mattered was the journey—the sheer audacity of making you wait five minutes for a joke your uncle told in 1987.