The funniest standup I’ve ever seen
I supported Lee Mack when I was quite new on the circuit. He was still making me laugh at the 12th gig in a fortnight.
The funniest word
Snooker. A glorious word for the greatest use of a table humanity has yet devised. Fills any gap in conversation, anywhere in the world.
The funniest book I’ve ever read
The Onion’s Our Dumb Century. A very funny retrospective on a not particularly amusing 100 years. It was comforting to be able to laugh at the 20th century as it was swallowed into the history books where it belonged, safe in the knowledge that the world had surely entered an endless era of tolerance, cooperation, stability, freedom and sanity.
The funniest meal I’ve ever eaten
I once bought a prawn sandwich from a newsagent that had only two prawns in it. Two small prawns. It was not a laugh-out-loud funny meal but it was a rasping satire on corporate profiteering and the exploitation of the gullible consumer. Or just a badly made sandwich. I couldn’t tell.
The funniest TV show I’ve ever seen
The Day Today. Total comedy. Almost every conceivable type of joke, with fantastic incidental detail, served at incredible speed.
The funniest heckle I’ve ever had
My daughter, then aged four, came to see my Edinburgh show in 2011. After 10 minutes, the words “Mummy, I want to go now,” chirped across the room. I have had ruder heckles. I have had more detailed heckles. But I have never had a heckle that got a bigger laugh than that one.
The funniest joke I’ve ever heard
A joke by the Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolfe III involving the phrase “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, which is very good. Albeit not obviously findable online. Also the Man With A Head Like An Orange joke is probably the high point of human civilisation.
Andy Zaltzman: 2016 – The Certifiable History, Soho Theatre, W1, Tue to 7 Jan; touring to 28 Feb
