Description

They've laughed at the Kerryman for fifty years. He's still laughing back. Why pick on Kerry?

Jealousy, plainly. The county has more All-Ireland titles than any other, the lakes of Killarney, the Rose of Tralee and – if the late John B. Keane is to be believed – a fair claim on the Holy Ghost himself. Faced with all that, the rest of us are left with one feeble comeback: the joke.

But the Kerryman joke was never a straightforward insult. The eccentricity is always creative, the foolishness touched with genius, and the best of them are written by Kerrymen themselves – because laughing at yourself is the surest sign of a sharp mind.

Half a century on, this anniversary edition of the bestselling paperback ever published in Ireland gathers the jokes that have outlasted every fashion, every fad and every other county's attempt to fight back. As the great Kerry storyteller Eamon Kelly put it, 'You'd ate a bag of salt before you'd get to know a Kerryman.'

Just don't expect to get the better of him.