The joke that took Jerry Seinfeld seven years to write

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Photo / AP

Jerry Seinfeld has revealed that it took him seven years to write one single joke.

The master of observational comedy spoke to Nova's Fitzy and Wippa about the joke during an interview to promote his upcoming tour in Australia and New Zealand.

"You've been working on a joke about a tuxedo that's been playing on your mind and you haven't finished it?" Wippa asked.

"I finally finished it," Seinfeld said, "it took me seven years and the quality of it does not reflect all that time, it's not that good".

"I'm happy with it now and I love the completely giant waste of time that it was. I could have written an entire act in the time I put into this one joke."

So what's the joke?

"My feeling on the tuxedo is that the reason we rent it is because it's worn in situations where you just need to fool a small group of people for a short period of time," Seinfeld said.

"Awards, honourings, strip joints, rip-off restaurants, casinos ... there's just a quick little scam here that we're going to need this outfit for.

"That's the essence of the joke and I don't know why I could not find a way to express that, that that's how I see tuxedos."

The 62-year-old stand-up also spoke to the Nova duo about his online show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and described his episode with Barack Obama on the grounds of the White House as "one of the highlights of my whole life".

"The secret service briefed you on what you do if someone started shooting at you," Wippa said, "what was that, what did they say to you?"

"Oh my god it was fantastic," Seinfeld said.

"First they tell you that this truck is going to pull up and you won't have to get in it because we're going to push you into it ... they throw you into it. It was the most exciting thing I ever heard in my life, it was real James Bond stuff.

"The one at the White House was certainly one of the highlights of my whole life just that the President of the United States trusted me to do a gag in the Oval office with knocking on the window and playing on the fruit. That he trusted me was unbelievable."