World's funniest joke

The "world's funniest joke" is a term used by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in 2002 to summarize one of the results of his research. For his experiment, named LaughLab, he created a website where people could rate and submit jokes.

Richard created LaughLab – a year long project that aimed to discover the world’s funniest joke.   The project was set-up in collaboration with The British Science Association, and involved people sending in their favourite jokes, and rating how funny they found the jokes submitted by others.  The project attracted attention from the international media, resulting in the website receiving over 40,000 jokes and 1.5 million ratings.

LaughLab has now finished but is described in Richard’s book, Quirkology.

The winning joke was submitted by Gurpal Gosall, a 31 year old psychiatrist from Manchester in the UK:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?”. The operator says “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says “OK, now what?”