Letter: Silent chuckle

YOUR obituarist (26 February) got it wrong. The shortest showbiz gag is neither Henny Youngman's "Take my wife - please!" nor Moore Marriott's railway ticket clerk shouting, "Next train's gone!"

Jack Benny's no-word one-liner on American radio in the 1930s set an unbeatable standard. A back-street thug stops Benny and snarls, "Your money or your life!" A silence follows as the notoriously stingy Benny weighs up the choices.

DUDLEY DOUST

Glastonbury,

Somerset