Jack Cohen's Joke Shop

The town of today is a totally different one to the one in which I grew up in, in the 1970s. It's amazing that shops like Woolworth's, Littlewoods and the Co-op at the bottom of town are gone forever.
It seems sad seeing Jack Cohen's Joke Shop lying empty at the bottom of Frankfort Gate. On Saturday's, we would catch the bus into town, taking with us our old records to exchange for new ones in the market, our old books and comics to exchange in Bonus Books and, after we'd been to the cinema to see the latest blockbuster, we'd always pop into Jack Cohen's before returning home. Jack was a lovely bloke and always very friendly to kids. The popular jokes of the day included inky soap, itching powder, whoopee cushions and stink bombs. My friend, Nicky Rich, would buy them all and then try them out on the teachers at school when we went back on Monday. Teachers were a different breed back then and it never went down very well so he often got the cane or detention!
My mum once took me in the shop because they had Action Men in the window. They turned out not to be Action Men but cheap Chinese copies. I had one anyway and Jack said to me, 'Don't forget to feed him!'
The funny thing is, that real Action Men were kept but the cheap copies were thrown away and now they're very collectable.
The last time I saw Jack was in the late 1980s, still running the shop. It seemed to have lost some of its appeal. I suppose times had moved on. Even so, the shop was taken over by a new owner and traded for many years after.
It seems a shame seeing it today, empty, knowing that it will probably just be knocked down and be gone forever.
The photo shows the shop in the 1960s with King Street Arch in the foreground.