The Last Laugh: Essays and Oddities in the News

By David W. Barber and Ben Wicks

The Last Laugh brings together a collection of Barber's short, comic and insightful essays, many of them based on quirky or unusual items from the day's news. On topics ranging from why the stock market is like Playboy magazine to the mating habits of mynah birds to why rug shampoo makes a great shark repellant or to what the poet T.S. Eliot might have thought of Toronto's megacity merger, Barber turns a jocular and sometimes jaundiced journalist's eye to a wide variety of current events and little-known items of interest. I was delighted by these short, witty pieces by this talented writer. Ben Wicks I enjoyed these pieces enormously. I never do the short run myself, since that is very much a newspaper rather than a magazine format, and I am delighted to see that my most familiar approach works over the sprint. Alan Coren, former editor of Punch Magazine.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0920151949
• ISBN13: 9780920151945
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Sound & Vision Publishing
• Length: 120 Pages
• Dimensions: 5.6" x 7.1"