A vintage joke shop has opened in The Lanes. That’s right, a vintage joke shop – a brisk rebuttal to anyone who thought Brighton’s capacity for esoteric enterprise had reached saturation point.

Frighton (get it?) is located in a Harry Potteresque alleyway with no name off Brighton Square. The property, a few steps from Claire’s Accessories, straddles two addresses and has two different postcodes. It opened on April 1, except it didn’t.

“We closed as a joke,”

explains the proprietor, a skinny man in a pink fright wig who will be addressed only as Dr Simpo.

Visitors can expect more hilarity inside, when they are greeted with applause from a sound effects machine, then, usually, farted at (“The batteries seem to have run out,” Simpo says sadly) before experiencing further shocks and boobytraps as they make their way around the bijou premises.

Illuminated 1960s masks leer down from the ceiling and lurid mannequins and puppets crowd the counter.

On the shelves sits a smorgasbord of oddities; imitation salami, “pharting” underwear, joke beer tablets, a vanishing Martini bottle.

Simpo has just taken a huge delivery of vintage “snappy gum” (pull out the proffered stick and a small wire trap springs down on your finger) from Coopers, the Eastbourne magic shop owned by Tommy Cooper’s niece Sabrina.

The family, some of the UK’s foremost makers and suppliers of magic tricks in the ’70s and ’80s, designed and made the product themselves. Weirdly, it’s more convincing than the modern version Simpo also sells.

To the glee of the teenagers who come in during my visit, there are three varieties of stink bomb on sale, from the cheap “bomb bags” to the “original glass vial” stink bombs. They are some of his bestsellers, along with the fake smoking cigarettes and an explosive cap that can be placed beneath a mug of tea or your grandmother’s spectacle case to set off a loud bang when the object is removed.

Unsurprisingly, much of his clientele tends to be kids, although the shop also attracts adults keen to revisit their youth.

“People come in looking for very particular things – flaming wallets, books that burst into flames when you open them. Usually, I can’t find them. I know I have them but there’s so much stock it can be hard to track things down. I know I’ve got flaming thumb tips.”

“An abundant amount” of the stock was inherited from Simpo’s uncle, a member of the “Magicians’ Oblong” – “That’s obviously a joke” – who also attempted to run a joke shop but wound up selling party balloons.

“He never really sold anything and all this stuff was sitting in storage so I thought I’d try selling it.

I’ve got more than 6,000 puffy eyes [little plastic gimmicks intended to make the wearer look like they’ve been punched]. I don’t think he sold a single one.”

Originally from the Yorkshire town of Holme Firth, best known as the setting for Last Of The Summer Wine, Simpo says he’s has always loved jokes.

His childhood summers were spent in Northern seaside towns; Whitby, in particular, where he would make a beeline for the joke shop to stock up on practical jokes.

“My best memories as a kid were going to Whitby joke shop, which was the best one in all the seaside towns. I used to wear waistcoats and bowties, so I loved those fake cognac glasses that looked like you were drinking the liquid.”

What he really wanted was a terrifying rubber mask, but his pocket money wouldn’t stretch that far.

“So I have a policy now; some stuff you can make a decent mark up on but I always sell the masks cheaper so kids can buy them.”

After taking a degree in directing animation at the Royal College of Art, he studied for a masters in performance art at Glasgow College of Art, graduating in 2007. The shop is something of a performance piece in itself, he says.

Originally, it operated from the back of an old 1967 Morris London ambulance, touring village fetes and festivals, but Simpo grew weary of seasonal work and decided to move to premises in Brighton’s Bond Street, before the astronomical business rates brought him to the alley-with-no-name.

The shop feeds into his other sideline, teaching drawing and animation to schoolchildren. Many of Simpo’s own comics are on sale, alongside other vintage numbers and he hopes it will soon become the setting for a regular children’s programme on local station Latest TV.

Pete Bennett – aka “Pete from Big Brother” will apparently provide the voice for the shop’s giant parrot.

Won’t Bennett’s Tourette’s be something of a problem?

“There won’t be any swearing,” says Simpo.

Despite its location, Simpo hopes the shop will become something of a hub for children, both real and overgrown, an oasis of madcap antics in a period where, he says darkly, “the fun police try to stop anyone doing anything. A joke shop is a quintessential part of the seaside and it seemed about time Brighton had one.”

* Frighton is open Thursdays to Sundays, 11am-7pm at 41a, Brighton Square. For more information, visit www.

frighton orbust.

co.uk Saturday