Stop me if you've heard this one before ... Tim Vine. Photograph: Julian Makey/Rex Features
There are some jokes that are guaranteed to divide opinion and draw reactions that range from sincere laughter to silence and disapproving looks. But they're not controversial, not topical - and to many, just not funny. Yet at times they can be held up as the height of comic genius. Why do we have such a variable response to puns?
On Sunday night at the Bloomsbury Theatre Tim Vine, previous holder of the Guinness World Record for The Most Amount of Jokes in One Hour (499), left the audience in hysterics with a set based almost entirely on puns and word play along the lines of, "So this cowboy walks in to a German car showroom and says Audi." Or, "The back of his anorak was jumping up and down, and people were chucking money to him. I said 'Do you earn a living doing that?' He said 'Yes, this is my livelihood'."
While I, and the rest of the audience, happily spent time and money listening to an hour's worth of puns there are others who would have considered it punishing (sorry).
But puns are not a form of comedy confined to the margins, far from it. On Have I Got News For You Paul Merton makes puns on a fairly regular basis that usually result in sincere laughter, and was the instigator of this Pot Noodle pun. Ian Hislop though, who usually delivers his puns with a knowing aside to the audience, receives light applause and groans in equal measure. Is it because Hislop seems to know he's being clever while Merton delivers his in a more self-deprecating style that people respond to more favourably? Or is it because Merton is naturally very funny so people laugh at his puns almost on instinct, irrespective of whether or not they are any good?
The British press still make use of puns at every available opportunity. The Sun's headline Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic are Atrocious when Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Celtic in 2000 is legendary while a story in The Times about Michael Foot and an arms group led to "Foot Heads Arms Body". These may be high-quality examples but every day in magazines and newspapers across the land puns are used to give a headline an added edge to try and draw a reader in. Even multi-million dollar Hollywood films use puns in their taglines. Chicken Run had "Escape or Die Frying", Cocktail had "When He Pours He Reigns" and the new Sex and the City movie has "Get Carried Away". Even I groaned at that one.
From the selling of movies to providing the basis of most Christmas cracker jokes, perhaps the pun has become exhausted from overuse. Yet Tim Vine shows that new life can always be breathed into what Samuel Johnson's dictionary called "the lowest form of humour".
