In on the joke

One of the chief mechanisms of a joke is a flash of insight. There has to be a gap left in what the joke teller presents which the joke receiver completes.

Here’s joke which was once crowned the funniest in the world. It’s attributed to Spike Milligan, but I doubt the real author is known.

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing; his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, and then a shot is heard. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says: “Okay, now what?”

You can tell exactly the same story and drain all the humour out of it by spelling out that the man shoots his friend. What makes it funny is that the audience connects the dots. Puns, observational comedy, pull-back-and-reveal jokes all work the same way.

Sometimes the points of jokes get lost in the mists of time. When Tony Hancock is on holiday and a young woman asks for his autograph, despite his sunglasses, he’s secretly delighted – but when she goes back to her friend, she audibly says “I told you it wasn’t Sabrina.” The reference is likely lost today, even though we understand the shape of the joke. Discovering Sabrina’s identity is left as an exercise for the interested reader.

So this brings us to in-jokes, where the whole of the source of amusement is something that the in-crowd knows and which leaves outsiders baffled. And there’s probably no finer example than Mornington Crescent. Hilarious to its fans, utterly mysterious to the uninitiated, its authorship is also unknown. It was introduced to I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue in its sixth series when the immensely talented and influential Geoffrey Perkins was producer, but he has never claimed credit for its invention. Graeme Garden was the chief architect of Clue but has never claimed credit for the game either. Maybe Humphrey Lyttleton came up with it? Who knows.

But the pleasure of listening to it derives in part from the fact that you have to have been initiated to understand anything that’s going on. And it was the pleasure of my life to initiate my co-host Abigoliah on the latest edition of All British Comedy Explained.

She was furious.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.