In 2001, psychologist Richard Wiseman partnered with the British Science Association in order to determine the world’s funniest joke. The experiment, called LaughLab, was conducted via a website with two sections. The first section allowed users to submit their favorite joke to the archive. In the other section, they were asked to rate how funny they thought a selection of random jokes were on a scale from “not very funny” to “very funny.”
By the time the study concluded the following year, Wiseman and his team had received a total of 40,000 joke submissions. Over 350,000 people from 70 countries participated, and close to 2 million votes were cast. The team was later awarded the Guinness World Record for “Largest internet joke vote.” A book containing all of the study’s results, as well as its top-rated gags, was also published in 2002.
The winning gag was submitted by British psychiatrist Gurpal Gosall and reads as follows: “Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, ‘My friend is dead! What can I do?’ The operator says, ‘Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.’ There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, ‘OK, now what?’”
Gosall told Wiseman that he sometimes used the joke to cheer up his patients. He further explained that it helps to remind them that there are always people out there doing stupider things. Wiseman discovered a few years later that the joke’s origins could be traced back to a 1951 BBC sketch as performed by Goon Show stars Peter Sellers and Michael Bentine:
In 2010, a similar study was conducted by OnePoll, seeking to find the best British jokes. The top selection, as voted on by 40,000 people, went like so: “A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says, ‘Ugh, that’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen!’ The woman walks to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her, ‘The driver just insulted me!’ The man says, ‘You go up there and tell him off. Go on, I’ll hold your monkey for you.’”
The Telegraph compiled a list of the study’s top 50 jokes at the time, many of which were credited to Welsh comedian Tommy Cooper.
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