Strangely inconsequential lolly stick joke of the week

Look, don't get your hopes up or anything. These lolly stick jokes are slowly getting less wantonly nonsensical, without any improvement in the actual humour content. You'll remember that the last one starred a book who wanted to join the police force. Well, I've just sucked off another (there's room for endless innuendo here, so let's just assume that I've done all the obvious "sucking off" gags, and get on with our lives), and it's another book related joke. You get the impression that the poor person writing these gags is some frustrated novelist who ended up in a garett writing lolly stick punchlines to make a living. Well, that's the pathos, now for the bathos (which, for all fans of Dumas, sounds like two of the three musketeers to me... which reminds me of a comic strip in Look In magazine circa 1985 [remember that? No, thought not] -- it was a comic strip based on the lives of 5-Star -- you remember 5-Star, the teen pop sensation for about five minutes in the mid-eighties: they all looked like Jenny Powell, but with bigger hair. What do you mean, "who's Jenny Powell"? Didn't you watch "I [heart] the 80s"? Whatever happened to novelty pop acts getting their own comic strip? I can just imagine "Britney - the Graphic Novel": a dark reworking of the cheesy Britney myths, where the pop princess is recast as a dark knight, stalking the mean streets of Gotham, protecting the wealthy and tending to the needs of the moderately well-off. But I digress... this 5-star cartoon featured Leroy (I've no idea if it was Leroy, or even if there was a member of 5-star called Leroy... the laws of probability say that there's bound to be) telling the other members, "My boss keeps calling me his musketeer" [implied other members of 5-star: "Why's that then?"] Leroy: "Because he keeps telling me that I must get 'ere earlier".

This rises several deep and confusing questions. As a member of a moderately successful teen pop sensation, why does Leroy have a job? Aren't the lucrative earnings of a moderately sucessful UK chart band sufficient? So why does he need to take a part time job? And, given the gruelling schedule that eventually led to the disintegration of the band (probably), how did he have the time? OK, I can't actually remember any of their hits, and I do remember some of the recent press coverage of the demise of various members of Musical Youth, but I'm talking about a band at the top of their career (they'd have to be, to have a comic in Look In -- you don't get that for just anything, you know).

Where was I?

Ah yes, the lolly stick. Here it is:
Why was the book in the hospital? Because it hurt its spine.

Do you see how that works? It's because a book has a spine. Which is called a spine because it plays a similar role to the spine in vertebrates, viz, it forms a solid support to maintain the position and structure of the body. And of course a book can hurt its spine. Er, probably. And if a book did hurt its spine, it would go to hospital. Obviously. Um...