Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow. When I woke up, my pillow was gone.

Tommy Cooper was known for one-liner jokes delivered in a deadpan, slightly bewildered persona, often framed as absurd personal anecdotes. This gag belongs to that stage-and-television stand‑up tradition: a surreal premise (“I dreamed I ate a ten‑pound marshmallow”) followed by a quick, literal twist (“my pillow was gone”) that turns dream logic into a physical consequence. While it is widely attributed to Cooper in quotation collections and comedy anthologies, I cannot confidently tie it to a specific dated performance, broadcast, or published script without a verifiable citation.

A classic one-liner built on dream logic and a sudden, physical punchline. The first sentence sets up an absurdly vivid image—eating a “ten-pound marshmallow”—that primes the listener for a surreal continuation. The second sentence snaps the fantasy into a mundane consequence: the pillow has been “eaten” in sleep. The humor comes from the quick re-framing of the dream as an explanation for a real-world loss, and from the exaggerated specificity (“ten-pound”) that heightens the silliness. It also showcases the deadpan, economical structure typical of stage and television stand-up: a single setup, then an immediate, definitive twist.