Can anyone help me out here?

This is something close to the original: "Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. There are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mother or father or it's my older brother Colin or it's my younger brother Ho Cha Song Sa Chu. But I think it's Colin." Far be it from me to defend Biggus but this seems to be widely posted on the net as unattributed joke - with no mention of the original poem (which is more or less the above but with line breaks). I can remember who it's by. Could be Roger McGough. John Hegley, Michael Rosen and Kit Wright are other possibles. It's in lots of children's anthologies.

I don't think it was a poem - I think it was a Tommy Cooper Joke and google confirms my suspicion. jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

I don't think any of Biggus' 'humorous' poems are original per se - they're all very old jokes put into a loose sort of rhyme scheme (which usually accomplishes the remarkable feat of making them less funny than before). We've discussed this before and I don't think Biggus is claiming to be the brains behind the jokes - he's just turning them into poems, or approximations thereof.

Yes, there is an existing poetic version of this one, though. I'll track it down. It's bugging me now.

Mark, you flag a lot of Biggus' poetry on here. I think he's your favourite poet.