Carr Jimmy - Only joking : whats so funny about making people laugh?

Whats So Funny About
Making People Laugh?

JIMMY CARR &
LUCY GREEVES

GOTHAM BOOKS

Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Gotham Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First printing, September 2006

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright 2006 by Jimmy Carr and Go Tiger Ltd.

All rights reserved

Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Carr, Jimmy (Jimmy Anthony)

Only joking: whats so funny about making people laugh? / Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

EISBN: 9781440627200

1. Wit and humorHistory and criticism. I. Greeves, Lucy. II. Title. PN6147.C37 2006

809.7dc22

2006015495

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Goudy with Bodoni MT Designed by Sabrina Bowers

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For the Unknown Joker

T his is a book about jokes and the people who tell them. Heres how it came about.

Weve been best friends since we met at university in 1992, and for the past fourteen years jokes have been a constant presence in our relationship. It was Lucy who first encountered comedy in a professional capacity (we use the term loosely), selling tickets for comedy shows at the Edinburgh Festival. By the time Jimmy announced he was going to be a comedian, Lucy had long ago wearied of the late nights, breadline income and monstrous egos, and got herself a proper job as a copywriter. She begged Jimmy to reconsider; nobody becomes a stand-up without losing all his money and gaining a drug problem. Its a job you wouldnt wish on your worst enemy. What kind of person gets his kicks from standing, alone, facing a room full of strangers who have paid to laugh at him? We all like a joke, but liking them enough to write hundreds, then tell them over and over again, surely moves you from funny guy territory into the realm of pathological obsessive. Despite the fact that he was quite good at the whole joke thing, she knew it would end in tears.

Unfortunately, Jimmys subsequent comedy career dealt something of a blow to Lucys reputation as a trend-spotter. But were still friends. Were a bit busier now than we were in those happy days of student grants and eight-week semesters, but underneath we havent changed a bit. Some people let fame go to their heads. They get all puffed up and start talking about themselves in the third person. Jimmy Carr would never let that happen to him.

Honestly, he wouldnt.

Unfortunately when we decided to write a book together, talking about ourselves in the third person became unavoidable. Our individual identities had to be submerged in a pool of we. Dont be fooled by our apparent unanimity, though. It conceals a number of bitter differences of opinion. For example, Jimmy thinks that pun about a pool of we is really, really poor and potentially damaging to his professional reputation; it makes Lucy snort with laughter. But on the whole, we found ourselves in agreement. Lets just say that after fourteen years of terrible puns, you know when to compromise.

We may not always agree about whats funny, but we both understand that jokes matter. Its easy for people to dismiss jokes as trifling and insignificant because they are designed to be laughable, and because they are such short, sharp shots of pure entertainment. In fact, although a joke on the page is a fairly straightforward proposition, as soon as it gets out into the open its quite a different matter. The context in which the joke is heard can change it from an innocent riddle to a complex, coded social message, one that is usually ambivalent and open to a range of interpretations. The act of telling a joke can be profoundly serious.

Fortunately, this book is not. Despite Jimmys professional interest in jokes, and Lucys tendency to take everything slightly too seriously, we wrote this book as enthusiasts, not academics. Its unapologetically personal, and its steeped in the kind of humor that we love. There are almost as many theories about humor as there are theoristsone scholar alone identifies eighty different theories of laughter. never have too many of. So this book isnt just about jokes, its a joke book too.

Weve scoured the widest possible range of sources to bring you 450 of the best jokes we could find. Some of them are by Jimmybut not as many as there would have been if he had written this book on his own. Some are genuinely ancientfifteen hundred years old in one caseothers are the latest gems from some of our favorite modern comedians. Where possible, we have credited jokes to their original author. But the genealogy of a joke doesnt always work that way, so many remain anonymous. (If you are a comic and find a joke here that you are sure is yours, please let us know via the publisher.)

Some of these jokes may be familiar, like old friends who arent quite as funny as you used to think they were. Others will certainly make you groan. A few may offend you. But we hope that many more of them will surprise and delight you. Theyll tickle some mysterious neural circuit, triggering a visceral response that makes you laugh out loud and store them up to retell to your friends. Thats the hit all of us joke junkies are looking for.