So I bit him

"So I bit him" is the punchline to an old joke, usually associated with vaudeville. Always related first person, the set up is usually that a person down on their financial luck walks up "and said he hadn't had a bite in [period of time]. So I bit him!" Later versions would occasionally switch the context to a fisherman.
The joke was already considered a hackneyed bit by the 1940s. The 1952 I Love Lucy episode "The Benefit" includes it as part of the vaudeville style act Ricky and Lucy perform (eliciting an "Oh brother" from Ethel), and it was used at various times to signify the cornball joke tendencies of Jack Benny (on radio), the Hanna-Barbera character Doggie Daddy, and Ralph Malph on Happy Days.
==References==
* Fozzie Bear recites the joke as his opening bit in the pilot version of The Muppet Show episode 101: "A funny thing happened to me on the way to the theatre, an old panhandler came up to me and said he hadn't had a bite in weeks...so I bit him! Sure it's an old joke, but he was an old panhandler!"
* Fozzie Amoeba tells a variation in The Muppet Show episode 409: "This blob came up to me and said, 'I haven't had a disease in weeks.' So I bit him!"
* For the 1984 computer game Welcome Aboard, Fozzie updates the joke slightly in the glossary of computer terms, this time using the word "byte" in the set up.
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Category:Joke References