Word gets around

I was fascinated to read the other day that somebody (or somebodies) has/have compiled a list of the world’s most highbrow jokes. That is to say, jokes that require a fair amount of brainpower to appreciate them – ones that wouldn’t be appreciated by people who think The Only Way is Essex is a documentary, or anyone aspiring to appear on the Jeremy Kyle show.

In fairness, most of the jokes in the shortlist went straight over my head (including the one about aviation, boom boom), but I thought a few of them bore repeating.

1. Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero? He’s 0K now.
2. When I heard that oxygen and magnesium hooked up, I was like OMg
3. A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and the barman says:  “Five beers, then?”
4. How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A fish.
5. A photon checks into a hotel and the porter asks him if he has any luggage. The photon replies: “No, I’m travelling light.”

Now I didn’t come up with this blog simply to regurgitate a bunch of jokes I found online (really, I didn’t), but rather because it raises the interesting concept of when a joke is funny and when it isn’t. Conversationally, few things are worse than a joke that falls flat – the slight pause, the knitting together of eyebrows, and then the audience’s lips gradually forming to utter four immortal words that start with “I”, end with “it”, and collectively puncture not just the joke itself but also the wider ambience of the moment. Brave indeed is the man who risks a joke on a first date, since a defective punchline can basically knacker an entire relationship before it’s had a chance to get started.

However, it is fascinating how jokes can elicit polar reactions even among a group of supposed peers. The PFA awards earlier this year was a fine case in point, when American comic Reginald D Hunter made an expletive-laden speech with numerous racist epithets thrown in. Hunter is black, although whether that makes his repeated use of the N-word acceptable is another argument for another day. The more righteous PFA members were appalled as the air gradually turned blue, but the vast majority of the audience were in stitches. On a more personal level, I fondly recall a good friend recounting a tale of watching a comedy programme alongside two devoutly Christian friends, and slowly realising with mounting horror that he was the only person howling with laughter at a particularly offensive/clever/rude/imaginative (delete as appropriate) religious jibe. One man’s meat, and all that.

The obvious solution to such quandaries is to tell only jokes that nobody in their right minds could find offensive. You know the sort: “A horse walks into a bar. Ouch – it was an iron bar”. Unfortunately, these jokes are usually palpably unfunny, which rather defeats the whole point. If you opted instead for: “A horse walks into a bar, the barman asks ‘why the long face’, and the horse replies ‘it’s a birth defect’”, you narrow the pool of people who will respond in the desired way, but those who do will provide you with a far more satisfying reaction.

With Edinburgh fringe season starting on Friday, this is a good time of year to take stock of how we define humour. No doubt most of the comedians who perform will be quite good, a few will be brilliant, some will miss the mark by a mile, and Tim Vine will win an award for the funniest joke of the Festival once again. However, when you find yourself squatting inelegantly on a rickety tea chest, in the basement of a pub down some dodgy wynd off the Canongate, waiting for a complete stranger to brighten your day by being hilarious, remember one thing. If you don’t get the joke, it doesn’t mean it’s not funny.