Christmas bonbon jokes
Appears in 7 episodes, first in episode 50.
Every appearance
Episode 440 - Stop The Clock
Christmas-cracker joke exchange. Sarah pulls a bonbon on air ('the bits went everywhere') and asks 'Why did the pig lose the race? Because he pulled his hamstring'; Simon answers with 'Why are cows such great runners? They've got great calves.' The bit returns twice more, inside Reginald's Club Corner and between TOC and Simon ('why did the runner take a pencil to the start line? In case they need to draw on their reserves later').
Episode 407 - Highlights and Hopes
The Christmas-special cracker-joke tradition, pulled three times across the episode. Mel and Simon open with it ("It's tradition." / "It's the bonbons.") - "What did the winner of the race lose? His breath" and "What do sprinters eat before a race? Nothing, they fast". Reginald devotes his first Club Corner insert to a "special Bon Bon Jokes edition". Mel and TOC pull their bonbons - "Why did the runner join a band? They wanted to improve their tempo" and "Which athlete stays warm during winter? A long jumper".
Episode 316 - InSantagram
Christmas-party bit running through the episode: the hosts pull a cracker on air and read jokes, and listeners and Channel 5 News crew send in recorded ones, Greg ("what did one wall say to the other wall?"), Tracey Wood ("a Christmas tree with bad breath"), Johan Duvenhage (Santa and Mrs Klaus, "reindeer"), and a two-hander car-trip skit about a statistician scared of negative numbers. Mel closes the show with the episode's title joke: Father Christmas posts his dinner on InSantagram.
Episode 215 - Bon bon voyage
The hosts crack real Christmas bonbons on mic and read the jokes inside. Mel opens two (both containing mini Rubik's cubes, one containing a lollipop that has liquefied) and reads "What do you call a penguin in the Sahara Desert? Lost" and "Where do snowmen go to dance? To a snowball". The episode title "Bon bon voyage" is built on this bit. Mel notes the jokes are always repeats and that Scott should take up writing them professionally.
Episode 188 - Merry Ugly Christmas
Mel and guest co-host Scott Watkins physically crack Christmas bonbons down the microphone and read out the jokes inside (the elf who won the lottery; "what do you call a crate of ducks? A box of quackers"), then riff on who writes them for a living. Santa cracks another with Mel and gets an Easter joke by mistake. Santa names it a show tradition, "it's a parkrun adventurers tradition, Christmas jokes", and nearly every roving reporter in the episode also contributes a bonbon joke, so the whole episode is threaded with them.
Episode 95
Annual festive cracker-joke tradition. Scott notes "last year, Mel, I cracked open a bonbon in our Christmas episode" and Mel recycles an uncracked bonbon from last year; nearly every guest is then asked for one, Scott's dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa, Mel's "What do you call a man with a spade on his head? Doug", Tim Oberg's "tweetment", Glenn Turner's "crack putt", plus jokes from PK, Lyndell, TOC and Greta.
Episode 50
A festive running bit unique to this Christmas/50th special: Mel explains that she hand-fills Christmas bonbons for her family and asks Scott for bad bonbon jokes. From then on every single guest in the episode (Ian Hay, Renee, Tim, Robbo, PK) is asked for a terrible bonbon joke, and Mel reads one out to open each interview.