My mate rang me up the other day.

He told me he had cut off his finger.

I said, "What? You cut off your whole finger?"

He replied, "No! The one beside it".

Did you read the joke first on some webpage like this one:
http://jokojokes.com/cut-off-finger-jokes.html ?

No. Like most of my favourite jokes, I either get them from DVDs or TV comedy programmes.

What difference does it make?

None, as far as originality is concerned.

Surely ORIGINALITY is the issue you are discussing.

Listen, even professional comedians steal each others' material. It is called SHARING.

A bit like stealing from the Apple shop. It should be treated as scrumping.

(AND before you say it, that isn't one of my originals, either. Ha ha ha.)

Personally, I don't have a problem with comedians stealing others' jokes; however, only when untruthfully claiming originality, which I was not accusing you of.