About jokes…..

About Jokes…

I have just read a news-item in a few newspapers of today. It is titled:” The official 50 funniest jokes of all times “. It is based on a recent research.

Since I am currently teaching a subject called Marketing Research here, in one of the MBA colleges, such intelligent (?) and funny (!) subjects of research certainly tickle me. Here is the news item copy pasted from one newspaper:

Quote :A team of researchers believe they have identified the 50 best one-liners. Researchers scoured the web and examined more than 1,000 jokes before whittling them down to a final 50 on which 36,000 people voted. They include digs at wives, husbands, blondes and foreigners and risqué jokes about religion, anorexia – and animal cruelty. A quarter-century after his death comedy hero Tommy Cooper makes a strong showing in the list, which also includes gags by Peter Kay, Lee Evans and Canadian comic Stuart Francis. Here are the ones that made the Top 10:

10. A man walks into a bar with a roll of tarmac under his arm and says: “Pint please, and one for the road.”

9. I’m on a whiskey diet. I’ve lost three days already.

8. Another one was: Doc, I can’t stop singing the ‘Green Green Grass of Home’. He said, “That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome’. ‘Is it common?’ I asked. ‘It’s not unusual,” he replied.

7. Two aerials meet on a roof – fall in love – get married. The ceremony was rubbish – but the reception was brilliant. 

 6. Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one – and let the other one off. 

5.I said to the Gym instructor “Can you teach me to do the splits?” He said, “How flexible are you?” I said, “I can’t make Tuesdays”

4. A young blonde woman is distraught because she fears her husband is having an affair, so she goes to a gun shop and buys a handgun. The next day she comes home to find her husband in bed with a beautiful redhead. She grabs the gun and holds it to her own head. The husband jumps out of bed, begging and pleading with her not to shoot herself. Hysterically the blonde responds to the husband, “Shut up…you’re next!”

3. Dyslexic man walks into a bra…

2. I went to the zoo the other day, there was only one dog in it,it was a shitzu.

1. A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: “Ugh, that’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen!” The woman walks to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: “The driver just insulted me!” The man says, “You go up there and tell him off. Go on, I’ll hold your monkey for you.” 

“It’s nice to see jokes from the greats like Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson are still up there and the ugly baby tale is a worthy winner,” The Daily Mail quoted a spokesman for www.OnePoll.comas saying. “Many of the jokes in the list are fairly timeless and will still be making people chuckle in thirty years or more.” 

Unquote.
 
Now, my simple take on this as under: Most esteemed readers and lovers of jokes will find that except for one or two, the top ten jokes listed out in the survey by researchers, are certainly not funny. Such surveys depend not only on the qualifications of the researchers, their experience, their sense of humour, their IQ etc but also on the similar traits of the voters who vote for their so called best-ness! A joke can be funny for me but not so funny for you. There is no uniform standard for the funni-ness of a joke. What constitutes a really funny joke and what makes a so-called joke go flat, are again subjective issues. It is generally believed that for a joke to be really funny, it should not cross a certain line, it should avoid racial references and should have a punch line which is easy for people of all ages to appreciate and react spontaneously ! Sometimes a one-liner may not be a joke really, but it may be treated as a joke by the listeners depending upon who is cracking the joke !

If our PM Dr Manmohan Singh or Obama, or for that matter, the Queen, makes an attempt to tell a joke, then in spite of its being low on its quotient of funni-ness, it will still sort of compel people to laugh over it, simply because the person cracking it is an eminent personality and so out of respect, we should laugh at his/her joke ! Yes, basically jokes are meant to be heard and laughed at, but one question that arises is :Can we sue the makers of the joke, if it fails to make us laugh ? I am reminded of a classic case I read years ago about a private prosecution case made out by a reader against the publishers of Jeffrey Archer’s books!!  On the jacket of one of his books, a blurb had said something to the effect that “the novel has a thrill a minute” and that “the twists and turns would leave the readers gasping”. A reader claimed that this was a misrepresentation of the facts/goods, and that there was hardly a thrill an hour in the said novel. Further he had opined that the twists and turns had left him only confused and yawning and he was not at all entertained as made out in the blurb, and so he wished to be reimbursed. The sum involved in this case was paltry, but had that reader won that case, it would have opened the floodgates for umpteen other claims. The publishers had fought it tooth and nail, till it was ultimately settled out of court. Yes, ultimately the customer of the joke (we readers) is king but if you feel it has not made you laugh, still laugh at it so that you do not become a laughing stock amongst the crowd of other laughers. ! 

And BTW, whether these researchers have no other subjects worth researching (poverty, disease, terrorism, etc) except for researching on such mundane issues, is all together another matter certainly worth laughing out loud ! Ha !! 

Ah, yes, even if you have not felt like  laughing at this piece, do spare a little time to smile at least, since my younger sister, lovingly called Dolly, once said this to me in one of her poems sent to me through an e-mail: 

A Smile Costs Nothing.

A Smile costs nothing,

Yet it can brighten up a cloudy day,

If life is a journey,

Why not smile along the way?

 Smiles are like flowers,

Beautiful, fragrant, rare.

Coming from the heart,

They really show you care. 

But some people,

Just ai’nt blessed with this gift,

And that is what sometimes,

Causes a rift!  

I wish I could stop all passers-by,

Offer them a smile, and ask them to try. 

For with learning to smile,

Its never too late to start.

All that we need is,

Some love in our hearts.

So, laugh and be merry

And smile in glee,

Remember, keep smiling its tax-free!!   

Dear, Readers, it is now your turn to respond with your funny and/or un-funny views.