Dispensary Corner

NO, REALLY - was it that funny?

It transpires that jokes are only as funny as their context and especially depending on how funny other people perceive them to be, according to new research published in Current Biology - see cell.com.

Jokes were rated funnier when accompanied by canned laughter, but even funnier still when accompanied by real spontaneous laughter.

Researchers also found that people identified as autistic generally found all jokes funnier, a curiosity that authors speculated could be due to their being less affected by not wanting to be seen as laughing at uncool “dad jokes”. Some examples used were:

• What do you call a bear with no socks on? Bare foot.

• What did Michael Jackson call his denim store? Billie Jeans.

• Why couldn’t the toilet paper cross the road? He got stuck in a crack.

• What do you call a sleeping dinosaur? A dino-SNORE.

• Why did the cows cross the road? They wanted to go to the mooooovies.

• Where do pencils spend their vacation? Pencil-Vania.

• Why are cats good at video games? They have nine lives.

• Why did the balloon go near the needle? To be a pop star.

• What did the duck do when he read all these jokes? He quacked up.

PD apologizes for these, but at least now you can entertain your children for five minutes tonight.