Old 'Goon Show' classic takes funniest joke award

A senior British professor of psychology claims to have identified the world's funniest joke. The winner, it turns out, is an old Goon Show classic by Spike Milligan.

Dr Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, asked people from more than 60 countries to submit their favourite jokes and then rate the funniness of jokes submitted by others. Over a period of nearly a year, around 40,000 gags were assessed.

One gag stood out from all the rest:

"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'?"

After extensive detective work, Dr Wiseman has established that the original version of the world's favourite gag was created by Milligan for the 1950s Goon Show.

A study of rare archive footage from 1951 showing the Goons in their first TV appearance has an early version of the joke, written by Milligan and performed by fellow Goons Michael Bentine and Peter Sellers.

Dr Wiseman contacted Milligan's daughter and she felt certain that he would have written the gag. As part of his research into the science of laughter Dr Wiseman asked some of Britain's leading scientists to submit jokes. They were then judged on their humour, with simple jokes written by a computer and 1500 submitted by the public.

The aim was to examine the perception that scientists are serious people with a poor sense of humour.

But the scientists' jokes compared favourably with those submitted by the public.

Unhappily for both, they turned out to be less witty than those written by the computer.

- INDEPENDENT