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Heard the one about jokes?

October 05 2002
By Tim Radford

Scientists believe they have found the world's funniest joke. The search involved travel abroad, a website, 40,000 printable jests, more than two million giggleometer ratings from 70 countries, a year's exhaustive breakdown of humour by age, sex and nationality, and a brain scan of someone listening to jokes. Boom boom.

Laughlab, an epic experiment set up more than a year ago, established that the British, Irish, New Zealanders and Au1stralians prefer a play on words; the French, Danes and Belgians have a taste for the surreal and Freudian; and Americans and Canadians chuckle at jokes showing one group's superiority over another. The Germans apparently have the broadest sense of humour - if only because they have no national preference, and therefore find almost anything funny. "It has been a fascinating year," said Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, England, and founder of Laughlab. "But if I hear one more joke I'm going to punch someone." The study reached a climax on Thursday when a PhD student dressed as a giant chicken unveiled the world's funniest joke before the cameras in Covent Garden, London.

The winning joke, the product of ruthless international selection including ratings by website visitors, was posted by Gurpal Gosall, a 31-year-old psychiatrist from Manchester, England. This joke, according to Dr Wiseman, appealed to all.

It also contained three key elements of humour: a sense of superiority, the incongruity of the response, and the rueful feeling of mortality.

Dr Gosall said: "It makes people feel better . . . reminds you there's always someone out there doing something more stupid than you."

It was one of a series read to a volunteer having a brain scan. With each joke, an area of his pre-frontal cortex lit up revealing the brain's "funny bone". There was also activation in the temporal lobe, an area linked to memory, indicating recognition of an old joke.

"It fits, because if people have damage to that part of the frontal cortex they lose their sense of humour," Dr Wiseman said.

There were other discoveries. In a study of British regional variation, the Welsh found jokes funniest, the Scots least funny.

People with good frontal lobe activation (those who could accurately guess the number of words on a page) tended to like complex jokes, whereas those who could not guess the number of words went for jokes such as: "What day of the week do fish hate?" "Fry-day."

Dr Wiseman also read out Laughlab's candidate for worst joke."Knock knock. Who's there? Boo. Boo who? Don't cry." It must be confessed, it made his listeners laugh.

The funniest joke:


He gasps to the operator: ''My friend is dead! What can I do?'' The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: ''Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.''

There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: ''OK, now what?''



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