13) 500 Jobs in Jeopardy...Where is Jeopardy?

Ashley’s father looked around the room, leaning forward in his seat. His wife let her eyes flutter and then went back to sleep. Ashley shook his head as the reporter continued his story about the job crisis in England.

‘See if we could find this Jeopardy place, then there’d be no more job worries,’ Ashley’s father said. He laughed hard and slapped his knee.

‘Where do you get all of these terrible, terrible jokes,’ Ashley said.

‘You don’t think your old man is smart enough to think of them up by himself.’

Ashley shook his head. His father was about to respond but the Premiership scores were about to be revealed just before Match of the Day, so there was a panic to find the remote. It was wedged between Ashley and sofa, he quickly switched it over to a penguin documentary on BBC 2.

‘Let me tell you a secret,’ Ashley’s father said, ‘I have a black book. It’s not too big and it’s not all my work. It goes back a couple of centuries, generations of jokes made by your grandfather and his father and etcetera etcetera.’

‘So where is this book?’ Ashley said, watching the penguins slide into the Arctic waters.

‘You’ll inherit it one day,’ he said, ‘But let’s hope not too soon. You ain’t got a sense of humour.’

Ashley switched it back over to BBC 1 as Match of the Day was about to start.

‘Arsenal on first? You’ve got to be joking,’ Ashley’s father said.

‘I know right. You’d hope Arse-nal would be near the bottom. Am I right?’

Ashley’s father shook his head.