Today is International Joke Day, the annual celebration which encourages people to start the second half of the year with a smile on their faces. Especially when laughter can be in short supply when reading news headlines.
Those who choose to celebrate can either do so by telling a joke to a friend or co-worker, or by simply watching some comedy to lift their spirits. Some may choose to research the first joke ever told…
According to Guinness World Records, it’s been traced back to a Sumerian proverb dating from 1900 BC. It goes: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”
Charming – and shows that toilet humour was just as popular back then as it is now.
For us here at Euronews Culture, we can’t think about the art of the joke without being reminded of the funniest joke in the world, courtesy of Monty Python.
It was unleashed in the very first episode of the comedy troupe’s show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which aired for the first time on 5 October 1969.
Shot in a quasi-documentary style, the sketch “Joke Warfare” (or “Killer Joke”) revolves around a gag so funny, so ruthlessly powerful that all who read or hear it promptly die from laughter.
It is created by Ernest Scribbler (played by Michael Palin), who writes the joke on a piece of paper, reads it to himself, and dies laughing. Hearing the commotion, his mother (Eric Idle) finds her son and also immediately dies laughing after reading what she thought was a suicide note.
The joke is eventually contained, weaponised by the British army, and deployed against Germany during World War II.
The army does so by translating the joke into German in “joke-proof conditions” – with each translator working on only one word of the joke for their own safety. One translator saw two words of the joke and had to be hospitalised for several weeks.
We witness its devastating effect – whether on a hapless British soldier / test subject, or on the bandaged German soldiers convulsing with laugher in a field hospital…
We also learn that the Germans attempted a counter-joke.
The Pythons illustrated this by real footage of Adolf Hitler from Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will, in which the Nazi dictator delivers a speech with the following subtitles: “My dog has no nose” / “How does he smell?” (said by the crowd) / “Awful”.
It was no match for the British killer joke.
Another Nazi attempt can be heard over the radio: “Zher were zwie peanuts walking down der strasse, und one was assaulted… peanut. Ho ho ho.”
This too did not have the desired effect.
The sketch ends in 1950, when we learn that countries have agreed to a joke warfare ban at the Geneva Convention. The last copy of the killer joke is sealed under a monument, which bears the inscription “To the unknown joke”.
Throughout the absurdist sketch, the ultimate punchline is that the joke is never revealed to the audience. At least, not the English version.
WARNING: If you’re a German speaker, this article may become hazardous. Proceed carefully.
We jest, as the German translation of the unheard English killer gag is made up of meaningless German-sounding gibberish.
It goes like this: “Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!”
Any attempt to make heads or tails of it is the ultimate fool’s errand, and will probably break any translation software. But in case you’re tenacious about these things, it can be literally reduced to: “When is the ??? and ??? Yes! Something about a dog and the ???”
What did you expect from the surreal masters of unfiltered silliness?
Euronews Culture caught up with ex-Python Terry Gilliam three years ago at the Festival Lumière in Lyon, where he told us that Monty Python may not be able to do their brand of comedy in modern times.
“People are losing their sense of humour, and that, to me, is probably the most important sense,” he said. “Sense of touch is very important, sense of taste also – but sense of humour is more important. You get to the point where people are frightened to laugh. ‘Oh, no, you’re making fun of somebody!’ No, I’m making fun of humanity, and we are an absurd species of creatures.”
He added: “We are funny because we’ve got such pretentions, and we fall on our faces so constantly. Make jokes about it! It keeps life interesting.”
Check out our full interview with Terry Gilliam here. And keep life interesting with a joke, today of all days. Who knows? Maybe that salted peanut one may find a chuckling audience.
Happy International Joke Day.