Who are Joe and Larry?

Does anybody know who "Soft Joe" is because apparently I've got more balls than him and I'd like to meet him to find out. Also who is this Larry bloke who I'm as happy as?

Don't know about soft Joe. But wasn't Larry supposed be a boxer years and years ago that won every fight? Remember a teacher in school telling us that. Might have been winding us up though.

Larry - certainly the best known character in the world of similes. The expression he instigated is most likely to be of Australian or New Zealand origin. The earliest printed reference currently known is from the New Zealand writer G. L. Meredith, dating from around 1875:

"We would be as happy as Larry if it were not for the rats".

Almost all the other early citations are from Australia or New Zealand. For example, this from Tom Collins (the pen name of the popular Australian writer Joseph Furphy), in Barrier Truth, 1903:

"Now that the adventure was drawing to an end, I found a peace of mind that all the old fogies on the river couldn't disturb. I was as happy as Larry."

There are two commonly espoused contenders. One is the Australian boxer Larry Foley (1847 - 1917). Foley was a successful pugilist who never lost a fight. He retired at 32 and collected a purse of £1,000 for his final fight. So, we can expect that he was known to be happy with his lot in the 1870s - just when the phrase is first cited.

The alternative explanation is that it relates to the Cornish and later Australian/New Zealand slang term 'larrikin', meaning a rough type or hooligan, i.e. one predisposed to larking about. 'Larrikin' would have been a term that Meredith would have known. The earliest citation of that is also from New Zealand and also around the time of the first citation, in H. W. Harper's Letters from New Zealand, 1868:

"We are beset with larrikins, who lurk about in the darkness and deliver every sort of attack on the walls and roof with stones and sticks."

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/40850.html

Not sure about soft Joe but I've heard of Soft Mick.

Soft Mick is a name used to describe an extravagance in East Lancashire and West Yorkshire

The phrase to have more <something> than Soft Mick means to posess an extravagant quantity of that thing.

Soft Mick is seemingly used more in Accrington in conjunction with shoes "More shoes than Soft Mick" Leading some to believe that Soft Mick may have been a Irish shoe peddler working around Accrington, East Lancs, in the early 1900s

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Soft_Mick

Ah haa! So my teacher wasn't blagging my head with the boxer thing then. Nice one Shay!

Never heard of soft mick to be fair Shay, it's soft joe round here.

Never heard of soft mick to be fair Shay, it's soft joe round here.

I've never heard either!

Larry is always happy though. Jammy get!