The Funniest Joke in the World
Encyclopedia
"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.
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.
, 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 torture
d 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 'assaulted'... 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.
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.
Also, the story "Nothing But Gingerbread Left", written decades before by science fiction writer Henry Kuttner, has a very close premise. Rather than a joke, a song (in German) is used as a weapon against the German soldiers. Engineered by linguistic scientists, it is by design such a catchy song that the soldiers just couldn't stop singing it, and eventually it took control of their minds and they could think of nothing else.
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...
comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
sketch
Sketch comedy
A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...
, 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 televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
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
And Now For Something Completely Different
And Now for Something Completely Different is a film spin-off from the television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus featuring favorite sketches from the first two seasons. The title was used as a catchphrase in the television show....
; it is also available on the CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
game of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
Summary
During World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Ernest Scribbler, a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
"manufacturer of jokes" (Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
), creates "the funniest joke in the world" and promptly dies laughing. His mother (Eric Idle
Eric Idle
Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, writer, and comedic composer. He was as a member of the British comedy group Monty Python, a member of the The Rutles on Saturday Night Live and author of the play, Spamalot....
) reads the joke, at first believing it to be a suicide note
Suicide note
A suicide note or death note is a message that states the author has died by suicide, and left to be discovered and read in anticipation of suicide....
, and also dies laughing. A Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
inspector (Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman
Graham Arthur Chapman was a British comedian, physician, writer, actor, and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.-Early life and education:...
) 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
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
test the joke on Salisbury Plain
Salisbury Plain
Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in central southern England covering . It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation and largely lies within the county of Wiltshire, with a little in Hampshire. The plain is famous for its rich archaeology, including Stonehenge, one of England's best known...
against a rifleman (Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
), then translate it into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. 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
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
and the Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement
The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...
. The nonsensical German translation is used for the first time on 8 July 1944 in the Ardennes
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
, 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
And Now For Something Completely Different
And Now for Something Completely Different is a film spin-off from the television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus featuring favorite sketches from the first two seasons. The title was used as a catchphrase in the television show....
, another scene of the joke being used in open warfare is shown, with Tommies
Tommy Atkins
Tommy Atkins is a term for a common soldier in the British Army that was already well established in the 19th century, but is particularly associated with World War I. It can be used as a term of reference, or as a form of address. German soldiers would call out to "Tommy" across no man's land if...
running through an open field amid artillery fire shouting the joke at the Germans, who die laughing in response. Afterward, a German field hospital
Field hospital
A field hospital is a large mobile medical unit that temporarily takes care of casualties on-site before they can be safely transported to more permanent hospital facilities...
is shown with Germans in blood-stained bandages, laughing uncontrollably.
In a following scene, a British officer from the Joke Brigade (Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
) has been taken prisoner and is being interrogated and torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
d by Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
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
Graham Chapman
Graham Arthur Chapman was a British comedian, physician, writer, actor, and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.-Early life and education:...
) erupts in laughter and dies. The second (John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...
) retorts "Zat's not funny!" but then he too starts to giggle hysterically before falling down dead. Another captor (Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
) 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
Street
A street is a paved public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable...
, und one was 'assaulted'... peanut"), but proves in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
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.
Precursors
A story that ran for several weeks in the Sunday comics of Li'l AbnerLi'l Abner
Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared in many newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe, featuring a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished town of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Written and drawn by Al Capp , the strip ran for 43 years, from August 13, 1934 through...
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
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
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.
Also, the story "Nothing But Gingerbread Left", written decades before by science fiction writer Henry Kuttner, has a very close premise. Rather than a joke, a song (in German) is used as a weapon against the German soldiers. Engineered by linguistic scientists, it is by design such a catchy song that the soldiers just couldn't stop singing it, and eventually it took control of their minds and they could think of nothing else.