I once shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up.

The line is a barbed, self-mocking show-business joke that plays on Dean Martin’s public persona as a hard-drinking, carefree entertainer. By contrasting himself with Pat Boone—widely associated in mid‑century American pop culture with wholesome, clean-cut respectability—Martin suggests that Boone’s perceived purity is so potent it could “sober up” even half of Martin’s body on contact. The humor depends on exaggeration and on the audience’s familiarity with both men’s carefully cultivated images, turning celebrity branding into a punchline about morality, image management, and the comic distance between “clean” and “sinful” entertainment personas.