The Funniest Joke in the World
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The Funniest Joke in the World" is the title most frequently used for written references to a Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy sketch, which is also known by two other phrases that appear within it, "Joke Warfare" and "Killer Joke", the latter being the most commonly spoken title used to refer to it. The premise of the sketch is that the joke is so funny that anyone who reads or hears it promptly dies from laughter.
Broadcast
The sketch appeared in the first episode of the television show Monty Python's Flying Circus ("Whither Canada"), first shown on October 5, 1969. The sketch was later remade in a shorter version for the film And Now For Something Completely Different; it is also available on the CD-ROM game of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
Summary
During World War II, Ernest Scribbler, a British "manufacturer of jokes" (Michael Palin), creates "the funniest joke in the world" and promptly dies laughing. His mother (Eric Idle) reads the joke, at first believing it to be a suicide note, and also dies laughing. A Scotland Yard inspector (Graham Chapman) retrieves the joke, but despite the playing of sombre music on gramophone records and the chanting of laments by fellow policemen to create a depressing mood, also dies laughing.
The British Army test the joke on Salisbury Plain against a rifleman (Terry Jones), then translate it into German. Each translator only translates one word of the joke, so as not to be killed by reading the whole joke. One of them saw two words of the joke and had to spend a few weeks in hospital. This German version is said to be "over 60,000 times as powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke", a reference to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement. The nonsensical German translation is used for the first time on 8 July 1944 in the Ardennes, causing German soldiers to fall down dead from laughter:
To a German speaker, the joke contains a number of nonsense words, and does not translate into anything meaningful.
In the version of the sketch featured in And Now For Something Completely Different, another scene of the joke being used in open warfare is shown, with Tommies running through an open field amid artillery fire shouting the joke at the Germans, who die laughing in response. Afterward, a German field hospital is shown with Germans in blood-stained bandages, laughing uncontrollably.
In a following scene, a British officer from the Joke Brigade (Michael Palin) has been taken prisoner and is being interrogated and tortured by Gestapo officers. The torture is completely benign, but the prisoner is eventually persuaded to recite the joke after being tickled. One of the Nazi officers (Graham Chapman) erupts in laughter and dies. The second (John Cleese) retorts "Zat's not funny!" but then he too starts to giggle hysterically before falling down dead. Another captor (Terry Gilliam) notices the two deceased officers and points his gun at Palin, who recites the joke to the captor, who also dies laughing.
The Germans attempt counter-jokes. Eventually their best joke is used in action ("There were zwei peanuts, walking down the straße, und one was a salted... peanut"), but proves in English to be hopelessly bad. The British joke is laid to rest when "peace broke out" at the end of the war as countries agree to a Joke Warfare ban at the Geneva convention. In 1950, the last paper copy of the joke is sealed under a monument bearing the inscription "To the Unknown Joke".
Throughout the whole sketch, the English version of the joke is never revealed to the audience, ostensibly because of the fear that the 'audience' might drop dead from laughter, the deaths in the sketch serving to play up the joke's alleged lethality.
A precursor
A story that ran for several weeks in the Sunday comics of Li'l Abner during 1967 concerned the creation of a joke, never actually revealed, that was so funny that anyone who heard it immediately died laughing. For safety reasons, government agents somehow decided to keep the joke hidden in the protective custody of Abner Yokum. Meanwhile, comedian Bob Hope learns of the existence of this "Funniest Joke in the World", but not about its deadly effects, and decides that he wants to recite it on his next television show. He procures the joke from Abner, and the government agents learn of this development too late to prevent him from reading it on national television. It turns out, however, that before Bob Hope obtained the joke from him, Abner had read the joke, not understood it, and substituted his own favourite joke. It is this joke that Bob Hope reads on the air, to no harmful effect whatsoever.
