far away in the steppe when the weather is good. And it's a tricky oneno matter how long you ride towards it, you'll never reach it. You'll only wear down your horse." (Many other folk characters have starred in this type of joke as well, including Rabinovich.) Jokes about Vasily Ivanovich and Petka are so common that meta-jokes on the subject exist. A man dies and goes to heaven. An angel is showing him around and leads him to a room of beds. "You can pick any bed you want" the angel says "they are all really comfortable but whenever someone who is living remembers you, you must flip over in your sleep." The man looks around. "All right" he says, "I'll take the bed near those two fans." "Those aren't fans" says the angel, "those are Vasily Ivanovich and Petka." See also under Fantômas below. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson A number of jokes involve characters from the short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about the private detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Doctor Watson. The jokes appeared and became popular soon after The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson film series was broadcast on Soviet TV in the late 1970s to mid-1980s, starring Vasily Livanov as Sherlock Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Lines from these films are usually included in the jokes («Элементарно, Ватсон!» – "Elementary, my dear Watson!"). The narrator of the joke usually tries to mimic Livanov's husky voice. The standard plot of these jokes is a short dialog where Watson naïvely wonders about something, and Holmes finds a "logical" explanation to the phenomenon in question. Occasionally the jokes also include other characters – Mrs Hudson, the landlady of Holmes's residence on Baker Street; or Sir Henry and his butler Barrymore from The Hound of the Baskervilles; or the detective's nemesis Professor Moriarty. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go on a camping trip. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, Holmes wakes Watson up and says: "Watson, look up, and tell me what you see." / "I see millions and millions of stars." / "And what do you deduce from that?" / "Well, if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like Earth out there. And if there