{I've posted this previously but's it's always good to revisit things that make us think as well as laugh.}
It was one of the classic sketches from the first episode to air of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It’s referred to in various ways, including “The Funniest Joke in the World,” “Killer Joke,” “Joke Warfare,” and “The Deadliest Joke in the World.”
[In the early days, there was never really a need for an “official” name for various Python sketches. This would eventually result in occasional confusion and insecurities for fact-checking types. Attempts to catalog the sketches have sometimes resulted in the same sketch having a different name when it appears on CD, in books, and on DVD.
Of course, the Pythons themselves spend very little time worrying about the names of sketches. Which is why I’ll occasionally get a question from one of them wanting to know which show included Stanislav Richter playing the Warsaw Concerto while escaping from a sack.
Not that sketches with “official,” accepted titles are necessarily very useful as far as identifying contents, mind you, as the previously mentioned sketch has come to be referred to as “Farming Club/Life of Tchaikovsky.”
But I digress.]
It is one of the earlier Python sketches to take aim at the nature of jokes. As Python fans know, it tells the story, documentary-style, of a joke so funny that it could kill at a range of up to fifty yards. We see testing and attempts to utilize it in battle, as well as German efforts to cultivate a similarly effective joke.
The “Custard Pie Sketch/Comedy Lecture/History of Slapstick,” performed by the Pythons in their stage shows, is a similar self-referential example. One of the earliest, if not the very first, sketch utilized in the Python oeuvre, this was written at Oxford by Terry Jones (with the assistance of some of his colleagues), and incorporated by the Pythons while they were planning their live performances. It involves a university professor lecturing on slapstick humor, as his three associates demonstrate the throwing of custard pies and getting whacked in the head with a board. It is much funnier than I am making it sound here, and the results can be seen in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
But now, academics have announced a real-life twist on this history of jokes. Scientists at the University of Wolverhampton have revealed what is apparently the world’s oldest joke. To the surprise of absolutely no one, it is a fart joke. It dates back to 1900 B.C., and is a proverb from ancient Sumeria in the area which is now known as southern Iraq:
“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.”
Not the knee-slapper we might have hoped for, I’m afraid, given all of the build-up. Perhaps it loses something in the translation.
Academics don’t always know the best way to phrase a gag.
The original version reportedly occurs in tablets dating to the Old Babylonian period, and may go as far back as 2300 B.C. According to the study, led by Dr. Paul McDonald, it is the ancient equivalent of a remark by John Barrymore: "Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock."
Like most good jokes, though, those on the list poke fun at authority and deal with sex and other taboos. The second-oldest dates back to the Westcar Papyrus from 1600 B.C., and targets King Snofru:
"How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish."
A little clunky, but we get the point.
It’s surprising how much actually hasn’t changed. The third-oldest joke, which dates back to Adab 1200 B.C., actually incorporates comedy’s “Rule of Three,” in which the set-up for the gag involving three ox drivers is repeated twice before the third and final time, which incorporates the laugh-getting twist. To me, this raises the question of whether Adab 1200 B.C. featured improv groups.
Of course, since these were academics who compiled the list, it raises the question of whether or not they understood a lot of the ancient jokes. Human being have been making jokes ever since there were human beings—they just aren’t all understandable to modern sensibilities. Even many jokes by Shakespeare and Chaucer have to be explained to today’s readers.
I’ll close with my favorite ancient gag, a Roman joke from the first century B.C.; it may not literally kill, but it holds up pretty well two thousand years later. It describes the Emperor Augustus traveling through his realm and encountering a man who bears a striking resemblance to himself.
Intrigued, he asks the man: "Was your mother at one time in service at the palace?"
The man replies: "No your highness, but my father was."
Don’t forget to tip your serving wenches, I’ll be here till A.D.!
