What makes a joke funny?
QUESTION Who said the perfect joke was one where the set-up and the punch line were the same?
Canadian comedian norm Macdonald described his holy grail as a joke where the punch line was the same as the set-up.
He became famous for Weekend Update, the comic news bulletins on the Saturday night Live TV show in the U.S., but was sacked for telling jokes about O. J. Simpson and Michael Jackson.
The closest norm came to his perfect joke was: ‘Julia Roberts told reporters this week that her marriage to Lyle Lovett has been over for some time. The key moment, she said, came when she realised that she was Julia Roberts and that he was Lyle Lovett.’
Country music star Lovett is known for his distinctive features.
another example followed the death of Jerry Rubin, a leading figure in the U.S. counterculture and co-founder of the Youth international Party (YiP), whose members were called Yippies.
norm began: ‘Yippee! Jerry Rubin died last week . . . ahem! . . . that is, Yippie Jerry Rubin died last week.’
Rory Wilson, Bath.
QUESTION What was the Nootka Crisis?
THiS was an 18th-century dispute over the seizure of vessels at nootka Sound, an inlet on Vancouver island, which almost sparked war between Britain and Spain.
its resolution ended the Spanish claim to monopoly of trade and settlement on the western coast of north america and made possible British colonial expansion to the Pacific.
The incident began during the summer of 1789 at the Spanish outpost Santa Cruz de nuca, named after the original inhabitants, the nuu-chah-nulth nation.
Commander Jose Esteban Martinez seized four British trading vessels owned by Captain John Meares that were there to establish a fur trading outpost.
Meares appealed to the British government, sparking an international incident. The Spanish claimed possession of the north-western coast of america based on a papal bull of 1493.
Pope alexander Vi had divided the western hemisphere into Spanish and Portuguese zones, in theory granting nearly the entire new World to Spain.
Britain contended that rights of sovereignty could be established only by occupation of the land and threatened war. The Spanish backed down.
The nootka Sound Convention, signed on October 28, 1790, acknowledged that each nation was free to navigate and fish in the Pacific, and to trade and establish settlements on unoccupied land.
Joseph Ware, Dawlish, Devon.
QUESTION What’s the most irritating advert?
FURTHER to the earlier answer nominating GoCompare, in its 2019 ad, the fictional Welsh tenor Gio Compario crashed into a tree and flipped his car.
it was one of the most complained about adverts of all time with road safety charities claiming it trivialised accidents.
Surely the most irritating, or some say brilliant, ad was Fruit Pastilles’s ‘Got to chew’ adverts in the early 1980s.
i still have to consider whether i’ve got to chew the blasted things.
Emma Murphy, Cardiff.
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