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I saw an old PSA, maybe from the 50s or 60s, that had a similar situation (sans prostitute). The twist is, it's a paprr check instead of cash and the guy who wrote the check is broke. There's this whole chain of endorsements as the check is passed around town before it gets back to the guy who wrote it, saving him from the shame of a bounced check.

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but a cheque has a giver and a receiver, the receiver cannot then give the check to someone else as payment since the giver and receiver printed on the cheque are different

Yes they can. By simply writing "Pay to the order of: X" in the endorsement area, the original recipient can create what's called a "third-party cheque". A bank would probably not accept this today, but it was certainly done in the past.

Interesting, I used to do that all the time (up until 2018 maybe?) to let friends or family cash checks for me and it worked with no problem, even though I wasn't even in the country. I just Googled it and apparently many banks still accept third party checks, although it does seem to be partly at the discretion of the bank manager and often requires both people present. Here's a decent list of banks' conditions: https://firstquarterfinance.com/where-can-i-cash-a-third-par...

That almost sounds like it's endorsing check fraud

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