Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in the movie A Cock and Bull Story, based on Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy novel.
"What's the difference between a rowing boat and Joan of Arc?" "One is made of wood and the other is Maid of Orleans."
Are ancient gags funny? The above stinker has been discovered in a Victorian joke book that belonged to the 19th century clown Tom Lawrence - extracts from which will be performed at the Blackpool Grand this Thursday. It's a ropey joke, which (as any comic would tell you) could be slightly redeemed were it set-up to read: "what's the difference between Noah's Arc and Joan of Arc?" But the "Maid of Orleans" quip is positively rib-clutching next to Lawrence's witticisms about women ("they ease life's shocks, they mend our socks, but can't they spend the money!") and policemen ("they batter your sconce in for pleasure, they take all your money and treasure").
But let's not judge the history of comedy on the basis of a few out-of-context one-liners by a forgotten Victorian clown. For every centuries-old gag that has lost its lustre, another will retain the power to make us laugh. Shakespeare's puns may not have aged well, as in this not-so-chucklesome Romeo and Juliet exchange: "For then we should be colliers" / "I mean, an we be in choler..." / "Ay... draw your neck out o' the collar." But (as Jimmy Carr points out in his new book The Naked Jape), there are gags in the world's oldest joke book, the Greek compendium Philogelos, that correspond closely to stand-up routines of the present day.
In some ways, it's a matter of contemporary tastes and attitudes: we don't find the 70s sitcom Love Thy Neighbour funny in the multicultural 2000s but, read today, 250 years after its publication, Laurence Sterne's proto-postmodern novel Tristram Shandy may be funnier than ever. In the Philogelos, writes Carr, "there are a couple of jokes about lettuce which only make sense if you share the ancient superstition that lettuce is an aphrodisiac". Likewise Lawrence's attitude to women, which doesn't have much purchase in the 21st century.
But I'll bet if we could see Lawrence's act, rather than just read his jokes, we'd find something to laugh at. "The physicality of it," says his great-great-great-granddaughter, the archivist Ann Featherstone, "could be compared to Lee Evans" - whose ageless comedy is as funny now as Chaplin's was, as Laurel and Hardy's was, in the music hall era. And, while Shakespeare's puns have palled, his comedic situations - eavesdropping on Malvolio, Benedick and Beatrice's sparring - are timelessly entertaining. Language evolves, social mores develop, Joan of Arc gags may plummet in popularity - but the human comedy remains as remarkably consistent as the presence of the fools, tricksters and stand-ups smirking on its sidelines.
