'Good evening ladies & germs' - WTH?!?

[Hail_Ants]

Does this ancient, cliched, Catskill comic opening line actually mean anything? Is there any double entendré implied with the word ‘germs’? Or is it just a simple (and dumb) substitution for gentlemen?

[Mangetout]

I’ve heard other variants of it (always substituting another word with a soft ‘g’); I think it is just a catch-the-audience-by-surprise-warm-up thing.

[gotpasswords]

Far as I know, it’s just something silly along the lines of

Good evening ladles and jellyspoons!

[aahala]

IIRC, back in the 60’s there was a popular insult comic by the name of Jack E. Leonard who used the line quite a bit on TV.

[Fear_Itself]

Actually, it was Milton Berle, though others may have stolen his material:

**“Good evening, ladies and germs,” Berle would say to the audience. “I mean ladies and gentlemen. I call you ladies and gentlemen, but you know what you really are.” **

[LurkMeister]

Ladles and Jellyspoons;

I come before you to stand behind you, to tell you something I know nothing about. Next Thursday, which is Good Friday, there will be a mother’s meeting for fathers only. Admission is free, you can pay at the door; pull up a chair and sit on the floor. Now gather around and I’ll tell you the fable of the four square corners on the round table.

A speech I had learned in Cub Scouts mumbledy-mumble years ago, typed completely from memory. Now if I could just remember where I left my spare glasses.

[Ice_Wolf]

Could Ladles and Jellyspoons have come from 1948? According to that site, the “poem” was sighted in:

A Rocket In My Pocket: The Rhymes & Chants of Young Americans (edited by Carl Withers and illustrated by Sussanne Suba). The first edition was published by Henry Holt in 1948, but it was subsequently published in shortened form titled Favorite Rhymes from A Rocket in My Pocket by Scholastic in 1967 and 1990.