Opinion: Guisers Must Tell a Joke, and It Must Be Good. I Am Not Running a Charity.
Our columnist sets out his rules for tomorrow night. Standards have slipped. Sweets must be earned.
Guisers on the doorstep: they'd better have material. Photo: Beth Teutschmann teutschmann, “Carved pumpkin as face (Unsplash)”, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Tomorrow night, I will open my front door to perhaps forty children. I will have a bowl of sweets. And I will have standards.
In my day, guising meant you had to do something. A joke. A song. A poem. A bit of Burns, badly. Now children turn up, hold out a bag and say “trick or treat” like a parking attendant. That is not guising. That is a transaction.
So here are my rules. A joke gets you one sweet. A good joke gets you two. A joke I haven’t heard since 1987 gets you the big bag.
A song gets you three, unless it is the same song as the last six children, in which case it gets you a polite nod.
No knock-knock jokes. I have heard them all. I can predict them. I can see “Doctor” coming from the end of the street.
I’m not a monster. I’m just a man with a bowl and a sense of tradition. If you want something for nothing, go to a pumpkin house.
The real story: Perth and Kinross news (The Courier)
Letters to the Editor
The views expressed are those of the reader, and frankly that's on them.
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Quite right. My grandson knows four jokes and is ready.
— Helen B., Perth, 30 October 2026 -
Some of us just want a bag of sweets, Douglas. Not everybody’s a comedian.
— Kevin R., Letham, 30 October 2026 -
Knock knock. Who’s there? Douglas. Douglas who? Douglas has no sweets left because he’s too fussy.
— Isla W., Scone, 30 October 2026 -
Isla — one sweet. It was OK.
— Douglas F., Perth, 30 October 2026
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