joke data

The highest placed gag attributed to the Welsh comic genius, who died during the filming of a television show in 1984, was one about a gym instructor and the splits.

“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’.”

The joke came fifth overall.

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.

A joke about a male bus passenger insulting a woman’s ugly baby was voted the funniest gag ever. It goes: 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.”

In second place was a regularly told one-liner about a zoo with just one dog. The dog is a “shitzu”. The third placed joke was one about a dyslexic man who walks into a bra.

It is not known who should be credited with coming up with the top three jokes.

Also included in the list were gags by the British comedians Peter Kay, who had nine, and Lee Evans and Stuart Francis, a Canadian comic.

The most popular jokes were inoffensive ones and often included friendly jibes at the expense of husbands, wives, blondes, and foreigners.

Less tasteful jokes about religion and animal cruelty, also featured, however.

The study was carried out after a panel of eight comic critics voted Tim Vine’s holiday joke the best of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

His winning one-liner was: “I’ve just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I’ll tell you what, never again.”

The joke was criticised as unfunny on online chat forums, leading a research group to carry out the wide-ranging survey.

John Sewell, of www.OnePoll.com, which carried out the research, said: “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.

“Many of the jokes in the list are fairly timeless and will still be making people chuckle in thirty years or more.

“The majority of these jokes are clean and genuinely funny – but a lot are pretty subjective and what one person finds hilarious, someone else may not.

“Being able to tell a joke is a fine art and telling a classic joke correctly in a pub full of people can be tricky.”