- This article describes the Monty Python sketch. For Dr. Richard Wiseman's research, see World's funniest joke.
The Funniest Joke in the World is the most frequent title used to refer to a Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy sketch, also known by two other phrases that appear within it, "joke warfare" and "killer joke". The premise of the sketch is fatal hilarity: The joke is simply so funny that anyone who reads or hears it promptly dies laughing.
The sketch is set during World War II, when one Ernest Scribbler, a struggling British writer, creates the funniest joke in the world and then dies laughing. His horrified mother, played by Eric Idle, enters, clutching her chest and sobbing. Carefully taking the crumpled paper from his hand, (assuming it was a suicide note) she reads it, then falls over the desk, laughing hysterically, and dies. Further attempts to retrieve the joke are made, one including an officer who declares he will enter the home "aided by the sound of sombre music, played on gramophone records, and also by the chanting of laments by the men of Q Division." Unfortunately, this is still not enough to stop the joke from killing the officer.
It is finally retrieved by the British Army, and after careful testing, the joke is translated into German for use on the battlefield. Because the joke is so lethal, translators are only allowed to work on one word each; a translator who accidentally saw two words had to be hospitalised for two months.
It replaces an earlier failed joke (stock footage of Neville Chamberlain holding the infamous Munich Agreement).
The nonsensical German "translation" of the joke (including words that are not real German):
- Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
When translated on the online translation service Babelfish it reads
- If the piece of now is git and Slotermeyer? Yes! ... Beiherhund the or the Flipperwaldt gersput.
The joke is so successful in the war effort that it proves superior to an older German joke, (stock footage of Hitler addressing a crowd, with English subtitles under unrelated German speech):
- Hitler: My dog has no nose.
- Crowd: How does it smell?
- Hitler: Awful!
As a result the Germans formulate a counter-joke, played over the radio to London: "There were zwei peanuts walking down der Strasse, and one was assaulted...peanut". This, of course, fails to amuse anyone other than the German propagandist reading it out, although even this appears forced.
The joke is finally put to rest when "peace broke out." It is buried, and left under a monument bearing the inscription "To the Unknown Joke" (as compared with the British Unknown Warrior or the Unknown Soldier).
The sketch appeared in the first episode of the television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, and was remade in a shorter version for the movie And Now For Something Completely Different; it is also available on the CD-ROM game of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.