JOHNNY CARSON GETS A RETURN OF SORTS ON A SMELLY INVESTMENT

Did you hear the one about Johnny Carson and the garbage barge?

It turns out, according to a report published in Newsday, that some of the trash wending its way back to New York after an international odyssey belonged, in a sense, to Carson, who has had no end of fun with quips in “The Tonight Show” at its expense.

Newsday reported that some of the well-traveled garbage came from the Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens, which is partly owned by Carson.

A barge hauling the garbage left New York nearly eight weeks ago and is now heading back to the area after being turned away from six states and three countries.

“Tell Johnny Carson that the garbage is back in New York because of all the remarks that he made and we’re shipping it to him in California,” Thomas Gesuale, owner of Review Avenue Enterprises, told the paper. His Queens company compacted and loaded the trash.

A spokeswoman for Carson, speaking amid peals of laughter in his NBC office in Burbank, said, “His comment is, ‘Cast your bread upon the waters. . . .’ ”

The full quotation from Ecclesiastes is: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.”