With Jenson Button winning his second race then his arch-rival and nemesis (me), only three days his senior has to reluctantly retire a joke.

I first used it in my 2006 Edinburgh show “Pulp Boy” when talking about my jealousy of Jenson Button, being three days younger than me but being an F1 driver (my childhood dream) and being pretty successful (at the time). I was originally just slagging him off saying he hadn’t won any races.

Then in that very month of August when I was in Edinburgh he went and bloody won the hungarian grand prix.

the joke was born.

Last year I got to do some funny bits on the BBC Radio 5live coverage of the races – and for my debut I used the following joke:

Hello, my name is Terry Saunders. I’m a standup comedian, I’m three days older than Jenson Button and have won one less race than him.

and here it is from the five live recording itself…

the jenson button joke

I went on to use a similar joke in my Radio 4 comedy thing “Dad Designs” and have used it many times in gigs.

But now button has gone and ruined my life again. Yes I could just change it to two races instead of one. But it’s not as funny. And by the looks of it, by midseason I’ll have to say “significantly less races than him”.

So, as BrawnGP announce a lot of job cuts thanks to the credit crunch, I am hereby announcing that thanks to the BrawnGP team’s success I am having to make this joke redundant.

A minutes silence would be nice (after all, that’s what I got from audiences sometimes when telling it – Boom!)