Many years ago, I asked Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulin to read my story about the zoo. His revocation was printed in the first edition of this story.. And we became friends; somehow it started that when I came to visit him, I always brought a selection of fresh anecdotes to his collection .. So, to some extent, Yuri Vladimirovich gave me approval on the way to writing . Every time I came to Moscow, I brought Nikulin fresh anecdotes and toasts. I really wanted to catch him in ignorance of some of them .. But most of it was already in his collection. I brought a few hundred jokes and that sad autumn . And I decided to publish this collection of unclaimed toasts and anecdotes as a memory of a great man. Not now, sometime later, when time will slightly smooth out the bitterness of the loss! I think that if Yuri Vladimirovich were alive, he would approve this publication . In. Crookover, writerSeptember 1997