World's funniest joke

The world's funniest joke is a term used by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in 2002 to summarize one of the results of his research. For his experiment, named LaughLab, he created a website where people could submit and rate over 10,000 jokes. [ [http://www.laughlab.co.uk/ LaughLab official site] ] Purposes of the research included discovering the joke that had the widest appeal and understanding among different cultures, demographics and countries.

The study

The study documented regional differences in humour, as well as variations between the sexes. According to its results, men preferred more aggressive jokes, as well as sexual innuendo, while women preferred word play. Wiseman points out that this is the joke that the most people found reasonably funny, and that it would be unreasonable to expect any joke to be universally judged superior to all others.

The aim of the research was to shed some light on how the brain works.

The experiment was conducted in Britain, where researchers solicited people around the world to contribute jokes as well as judge them. At the conclusion of the experiment, the scientists had evaluated over 40,000 submitted jokes and tallied nearly 2 million votes.

The History Channel eventually hosted a special on "the history of the joke." Wiseman's joke was the basis of the feature, as The History Channel set out to see if he was right. As the feature concludes, the host Lewis Black argues that it's not as much in the punch line that makes the joke, but the performance and culture around it.

The jokes

The winning joke, which has been attributed to Spike Milligan, [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5064020.stm BBC: Spike 'wrote world's best joke'] ] was submitted by Gurpal Gosall of Manchester:

The second place finisher and early leader was this joke, submitted by Geoff Anandappa of Blackpool:cquote|Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were going camping. They pitched their tent under the stars and went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes woke Watson up and said: "Watson, look up at the stars and tell me, what do you see?"

Watson replied: "I see millions and millions of stars."

Holmes said: "And what do you deduce from that?"

Watson replied: "Well, if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like earth out there. And if there are a few planets like earth out there, there might also be life."

And Holmes said: "Watson, you idiot, it means that somebody stole our tent."

While this was the top joke in the UK:

In Australia the top joke was as follows:

cquote|A woman rushed to see her doctor, looking very much worried and all strung out. She rattles off: "Doctor, take a look at me. When I woke up this morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my hair all wiry and frazzled up, my skin was all wrinkled and pasty, my eyes were bloodshot and bugging out, and I had this corpse-like look on my face! What's WRONG with me, Doctor!?"

The doctor looks her over for a couple of minutes, then calmly says: "Well, I can tell you that there ain't nothing wrong with your eyesight."

References

* The British Association for the Advancement of Science: "Laughlab: The Scientific Search for the World's Funniest Joke", Arrow, ISBN 0-09-944687-1

See also

* The Funniest Joke in the World

External links

* [http://www.nature.com/news/2001/011227/full/011227-1.html Article in Nature]
* [http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1719 Article in New Scientist]
* [http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/03/joke.funniest/ Article on CNN (2002)]
* [http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/12/20/britain.laughter/index.html Article on CNN (2001)]
* [http://www.history.com/minisites/joke The History Channel's Feature on "The History of the Joke"]
* [http://www.comicwonder.com/joke/1a81b8c06 "World's funniest joke" told by members on Comic Wonder]