Can You Top This? was a popular
radio panel show in which
comedians told
jokes and tried to top one another. The unrehearsed program, sponsored at one point by
Colgate-Palmolive, was created by veteran
vaudevillian "Senator" Edward Hastings Ford, who claimed he was taking part in a joke session at a New York theatrical club when he conceived the idea. However, the format was quite similar to a prior joke-telling radio series,
Stop Me If You've Heard This One (1939–40), which featured Ford and cartoonist
Harry Hershfield as panelists. Many jokes involved ethnic humor told in dialect.