the Guardian's 'top 10 jokes of the Edinburgh fringe festival so far'

8 and 9 in full:

8. Victorians would have been great on social media. They’d have had their own emojis. Open brackets-close brackets means: “I’ve got rickets.” - Hal Cruttenden
9. I learned about method acting at drama school, when all my classmates stayed in character as posh, patronising twats for the entire three years I was there - Bridget Christie

joke #3 is by Katherine Ryan

I quite like the cat one, but it's apparently from a show called 'Punderbolt', so if the show is all jokes like that, and that was the best one then idk

Those one-line tweet comedians are such a chore to experience for more than 5 minutes

As usual most of these are bad but feel like some could be funny in the telling

1 and 2 are kinda basic but passable. maybe 6 is okay? the rest are just horrid

4 is the worst. Jeans/genes jokes in 2015? Lesbian dungaree jokes IN TWENTY MOTHERFUCKING FIFTEEN?

didn't notice that #5 was cut off as well:

5. If you want to to feel less intimidated by a bouncer, do what I do and imagine their ear piece is just a motivational tape going: “You’re a soft, strong individual.” - Chris Martin

stick to the MOR Chris

Coldplay better get back in the studio

xp: dammit

Fitting toilet paper allusion there

these are fucking abysmal except 1 and 9. voting 9 because it's not a joke, it's well-placed rage. but 1 is a cute little pun

#3 is mean and tasteless, but maybe not mean or tasteless (or funny) enough to be a fitting Joan Rivers tribute joke. you really have to bring it if you're going to invoke Joan Rivers in the context of a tasteless joke

7 might be passable depending on the delivery. The rest are basically on the level of what I'd expect from a kid who's at that age where he's trying to figure out what a joke is and how it works.

7 is by a kid, is it not, assuming Grace is Grace the Child

Ha, I hope so.

I didn't realise that Grace the Child is an actual child

https://files.list.co.uk/images/g/grace-the-child-playground-politics-lst172115.jpg

Always a mean-spirited joke about vegans on these lists, is it a contractual thing?

the jeans/dungarees thing is pissing me off.

Beginning to think lex is right after all.

stand-up comedy is abhorrent

I think about this occasionally, I'm reasonably sure that jokes and the people that tell them are ok and the guardian just have a terrible collective sense of humour

these are fucking abysmal except 1 and 9. voting 9 because it's not a joke, it's well-placed rage. but 1 is a cute little pun

― imago, Monday, 17 August 2015 17:38 (1 hour ago)

9 is total shit. no joke in it at all.

10 is ok.

you are both wrong about there not being a joke in that joke, there obv is if you know what a joke is

It isn't very good tho

the people that tell them are ok

Oh no no, I'm not having that.

9 isn't really not funny, but none of them are funny, and I like 9's anger better, so 9 it is.

ya but theres no joke so it doesn't count

how is there not a joke? classic paraprosdokian, beloved of stand-ups.

not a funny joke, but certainly a joke.

don't argue with the ref

I watched some Grace the Child's act on youtube and find it a little sinister tbh, sort of Lynchian.

not as good as Paul B Rainey's 14 Year Old Stand-Up Comedian:

http://pbrainey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/14-year-old-stand-up-comedian.html

This is a good paraprosdokian imo: "I like going to the park and watching the children run around because they don't know I'm using blanks."

I think #9 is a stretch as a paraprosdokian, since all of your classmates being posh, patronising twats wouldn't really teach someone about method acting. (Maybe something like "I learned how to play a posh, patronising character when I studied method acting at drama school - you should have seen my classmates" could work?)

Looks like I'm not voting this year.

i see it as a paraprosdokian because the second part of the sentence goes against the expectation brought about by the first for comic effect. although i suppose it doesn't change the interpretation of the first part of the sentence and thus perhaps doesn't strictly fit?

Yeah, that works.

"A sexual reference .. I thought it was a good idea, but my ex-girlfriend wouldn't give me one"

what does "my cat is recovering from a massive stroke" mean aside from literally his cat had a massive stroke? feel like i'm missing some british wordplay thing

people stroke cats, does "stroke" not have that verbal meaning in US English? i suppose you might say "pet" instead

number 9 is the only one that reaches me

i liked it better as deadpan anticomedy literally his cat had a major cerebrovascular incident.

it's true without the second meaning it's a lot less twee

i listened to tao lin and mira gonzalez talking about their selected tweets on bookworm and i was unable to focus as mira gonzalez's selected tweets were all poorly formed punchlines like: "does this anger in my heart make me look fat" and "it's the freakin weekend baby i'm about to have me some alcohol poisoning (it's monday)." not those ones exactly because i just scanned her twitter to find those ones to make this post. mira gonzalez isn't funny. i worry now, re-reading the alcohol poisoning one that it's an elite level satire of something. the tao lin tweets seemed interesting. i want to make a greater "tyranny of humour" point and a lesser point about how this sort of one line gag is hard to write.

i think it's interesting that british people respond to 9. those posh prats! we have different stereotypes of drama students, i guess.

i'll vote for 7. cut the first sentence. i'm sure it sets up some hilarious bit about juice bars and yoga? i think it's cutely observational just by itself. i think it would be good as a setup for some kind of material on the historic idolatry of buddhist societies. like how going into a buddhist temple is kind of like being patiently shown your grandmother's china cabinet of hummel figurines and matryoshka dolls. i chuckled to myself as i typed that, struck by how unfunny it sounded but i think there's possibility there!

http://sychoticcomedy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Sychotic-Comedy-Aisling-Bea.jpg

aisling bea, fun

http://media.ents24network.com/image/000/082/480/2815d90650f1e55821072040b285f7be15a5930d.jpg

bridget christie, who hates drama students

9 is spoken by the wife of the more or less unanimously-agreed (on UK ILX) best comedian (other than Limmy, who isn't a stand-up so much) - she's v funny herself but has a similar humour to her spouse - namely, savage & angry swipes at the bastards of the world, couched in intelligent, surreal or self-referential presentation

that's why number 9 is good imo - the slight lameness of the gag is part of the momentum of the anger

i don't know if the idea of drama students as upper class dilettantes is a new-ish one in the UK, or at least one that's been revived having died off in the 70s/80s. i don't think the "joke" nails much, i just like the malice of it. 7 made me smile because i have a little Buddha collection of my own and yeah it points at something about materialism

7 is the only one that made me smile to read it. The fact that it's by a 12 year old makes it even better.

the wife of the more or less unanimously-agreed (on UK ILX)

by people who don't go to stand-up clubs

I mean this whole thread every year, rly, no shade on Stew himself

guardian deserves more stick than the stand-ups for this

yeah, often I say "They picked that one?"

These are all really bad.

the wife of the more or less unanimously-agreed (on UK ILX) best comedian

Had to google this tbh.

isn't this a bit like picking apart song lyrics when they're written down?

tao lin and mira gonzalez talking about their selected tweets on bookworm

This was depressing.

she's v funny herself but has a similar humour to her spouse - namely, savage & angry swipes at the bastards of the world, couched in intelligent, surreal or self-referential presentation

Bit of a Cooper/Balls thing going on there then?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

bbut.. this is the official list:

The top 10 funniest jokes of the Fringe
"I just deleted all the German names off my phone. It's Hans free" - Darren Walsh **WINNER**
"Kim Kardashian is saddled with a huge arse ... but enough about Kanye West" - Stewart Francis
"Surely every car is a people carrier?" - Adam Hess
"What's the difference between a 'hippo' and a 'Zippo'? One is really heavy, the other is a little lighter" - Masai Graham
"If I could take just one thing to a desert island I probably wouldn't go" - Dave Green
"Jesus fed 5,000 people with two fishes and a loaf of bread. That's not a miracle. That's tapas" - Mark Nelson
"Red sky at night. Shepherd's delight. Blue sky at night. Day" - Tom Parry
"The first time I met my wife, I knew she was a keeper. She was wearing massive gloves" - Alun Cochrane
"Clowns divorce. Custardy battle" - Simon Munnery
"They're always telling me to live my dreams. But I don't want to be naked in an exam I haven't revised for..." - Grace The Child

basically, aside from these:

"What's the difference between a 'hippo' and a 'Zippo'? One is really heavy, the other is a little lighter" - Masai Graham
"Clowns divorce. Custardy battle" - Simon Munnery
"They're always telling me to live my dreams. But I don't want to be naked in an exam I haven't revised for..." - Grace The Child

.. I guess it's in the delivery.

i like the hippo/zippo and Grace's joke

Slightly better than the other list.

the Alun Cochrane and Grace The Child jokes on the new list pwn everything else on both lists imo

Yeah, that Grace the Child one is good, and the hippo/zippo one. Have heard the Alun Cochrane one before, possibly even told by Alun Cochrane. Surely the Kanye/Kim one's been done to death by now and no-one finds that funny any more (if it ever was to start with, which is unlikely)?

"If I could take just one thing to a desert island I probably wouldn't go" - Dave Green

^can almost imagine deploying this

jokes are bad tho

anyone could make one of those if they sat down and tried. these lists are a p embarrassing annual slur on stand-up comedy.

the Grace joke may not have been actively plagiarised but has certainly been done before

the fact that the Kardashian one can be told by a professional comedian and get him any sort of plaudits is just...

the entire idea that a festival of performance and comedy gets summarised each year as a list of "jokes" is just bizarre.

Well, yeah, there's a world of different between stand-up and telling jokes.

But there are other awards at Edinburgh beyond the Christmas cracker joke award or whatever this is.

yeah those jokes are like something you might say in the pub - except not as funny.

Stewart Francis's routine is basically just a ton of these jokes though, and I refuse to believe there was nothing funnier in an hour of it than that Kimye one.

refusal seems the only course of action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7pqO7YKBt0

I might need some therapy, cos i appear to be completely laughter-averse, unless I'm seeing Dominic Holland getting vapourised by aircraft guns.