In ‘The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul’, there's a passage (which I'm inordinately fond of quoting) talking about how everybody says ‘I bet you wish you played the piccolo’ to a double-bassist struggling around with an enormous instrument case, and they all think it's terribly original and witty and nobody ever works out that everyone else has already said it.

Over the past few days I've had a moderately nasty cold, and at the last count no fewer than five people have quipped ‘Just hope it isn't SARS’ or variants on same. I do hope this isn't going to become a similar sort of standard gag for everybody who gets a cold. I suppose there's cause for hope because anyone who's actually had a cold will already know the joke is old and won't inflict it on anyone else, but even so I gloomily foresee an epidemic of bad SARS jokes sweeping the world ahead of the disease itself.

(Still, at least the cold seems to be nearly gone now, despite a nasty moment yesterday when it apparently gained new strength by joining forces with the first hayfever attack of the year.)