it's a joke, Joyce

English

Alternative forms

• joke Joyce (ellipsis)

Etymology

Slight alteration of "That was a joke, Joyce," catchphrase of George Wilson (played by Graham Kennedy) spoken to his wife Joyce (Rosie Sturgess) in The Wilsons, a segment featured regularly on Kennedy-presented show In Melbourne Tonight in the 1960s.

Interjection

it's a joke, Joyce

1. (Australia, informal) That was a joke, so don't take it seriously.
   • 2005, Damien Broderick, Ferocious Minds: Polymathy and the New Enlightenment, Wildside Press LLC, →ISBN, page 128:

     Scientists are an amusing lot, often with a Monty Python sense of fun. When they say elementary particles such as quarks have charm and strangeness, it's a joke, Joyce.

   • 2009, Rick Stein, Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey, Random House, →ISBN, page 9:

     This book, like so many of mine, is an account of a journey I made to what I've rather cheekily called the Far East. Some people's eyebrows were raised at the expression, thinking it suggested that here in the UK we're still at the centre of the world […] But as my Australian fiancée, Sarah, might say, 'It's a joke, Joyce.'

   • 2012, Malcolm Knox, The Life, Allen & Unwin, →ISBN, page 12:

     She doesn't laugh. She looks at me quiet and solemn.
     So I tell her to laugh. About my conspiracy theories she just lapped up.
     'It's a joke, Joyce.'
     She shakes her head.
     'My name's not Joyce.'

See also

• not happy, Jan