Official funniest joke of the Edinburgh Fringe 2024 (accept no imitations)

These are better.

going to be hard to choose, two or three of these are almost funny.

A couple aren't even jokes though.

Falafel, a lovely pun

I refuse to give any sort of encouragement to someone who calls themselves Olaf Falafel.

Crushed to a pulp and fried in Edinburgh

No. 3 wouldn't work when said out loud...?

Maybe with some visual work... it'd still be crap though.

apart from 7 and 10 these are all ok-to-good

10 isnt even a joke, again

Heard any good observations recently?

No. 3 wouldn't work when said out loud...?

it works for me, what am I missing?

mane/main

do ppl really need it spelt out for them

in what accent do main/mane differ? I'm trying all my best impressions here.

1 and 4 are the only good ones imo. Voting 'sailed through'

in what accent do main/mane differ? I'm trying all my best impressions here.

they don't, which is why it wouldn't work for me; I don't think I'd infer the "mane".

8 is probably the most unoriginal of these

xp you would need them not to sound the same, which is the joke, for you to see it was a joke?

this, this is very worrying to me. im troubled.

I’m concerned because I had a low chortle at most of these

Not #10 though, I still have a shred of dignity left

bottle it
UK informal
to not do something because you are frightened; to fail at something because you are frightened

ah

I kinda liked it more before knowing this meaning.

'sailed through' wins just on simplicity

xp you would need them not to sound the same, which is the joke, for you to see it was a joke?

this, this is very worrying to me. im troubled.

I wouldn't get that they were saying mane - ha ha! like a horse's mane, do you see? - without perhaps the visual work Tom D. suggests. Maybe the delivery makes it, idk.

if

ok firstly picture me rolling my sleeves up and leaning in here,

if i were to put it to you that you are in an audience at a comedy show- albeit the fucking edinburgh fringe, granted- and someone said this to you and stopped and at least half of the audience laughed

if i were to put this scenario to you

anything?

I guess that would come under the delivery making it. I find the bit about half the audience laughing the trickier part of the scenario.

Fringe audiences will laugh at any old rubbish tbf.

i would perhaps skip Stewart Lee shows going forward

"sailed through" is the best overall - it's not great but it's structured like a proper joke and it feels like some craft went into the phrasing
of the terrible puns, "speaks volumes" is the best but i cannot deal with a guy named olaf falafel. i googled him briefly to see if i could find his birth name and found that he "won" the best joke of edinburgh fringe in 2019
the gaslight joke is the absolute worst, because ... that's the source of the term "gaslight"? it's not a clever connection, it's literally where it comes from. am i being gaslit by this joke?
the keir starmer one is interesting because it reads more like an adlib than a written joke. and structurally and topically it doesn't fit in with the others.

i guess i don't understand what edinburgh fringe is because my impression was that it was mostly made up of one-person shows that are confessional/autobiographical and "funny" but in a self-deprecating/analyzing way that is more clever than funny. but then these lists come out and it seems like the shows are just people rattling off 100 terrible pun-based one-liners in a row.

both options seem bad though.

I've always been a funny guy, so I feel qualified to critique humour. This joke annoyed me:

"I've been taking salsa lessons for months, but I just don't feel like I’m progressing. It's just one step forward, two steps back."

It annoyed me because the mention of salsa is distracting. It feels as if it's leading to a pun based on the sauce, but it goes nowhere. And the fact that it goes nowhere isn't funny by itself. The joke would have been much better with any other dance - flamenco, for example. Possibly tango, although that's also distracting because of the soft drink. But not salsa.

And "Keir Starmer looks like an AI-generated image of a substitute teacher" annoys me because it's not a joke. It's an observation. Humour arises from the sudden, shocking subversion of an existing set-up, but in this case there's no subversion. It's just a bland, bald statement. It's like those Frank Zappa song where he mentions buttplugs and golden showers and expects them to be funny by themselves. There has to be a subversion, a snap. And there isn't one.

No.

i dont know enough about dance to say whether the salsa is literally those steps, but i suspect it may be and the fact it also means a sauce is absolutely irrelevant

My take as a dadjoke connoisseur

My favorites were #5 (although "I love the Olympics" as a segue is pretty weak) and #4.

I feel like I'm missing something with #1 - does "bottled it" mean something like "canceled the plan"?

#2 is extremely groany

#3 has a timeless quality to it, which is both good and bad. Also the construction is a bit forced to make the joke work - he had horse for both the starter and the main course?

#6 would be funny if the setup weren't so forced (the thing the dad "used to say" isn't a thing someone would say - is that supposed to be part of why it's funny?)

#7 is barely a joke

#8 I liked it, but I feel like there have been tons of gaslight jokes recently so it didn't feel fresh.

#9 similar but less funny than #8 - way too many "my pronouns are" jokes, and this one doesn't really have a good rhythm to it

#10 is not even a joke, and could easily have been written by an average sixth grader.

i think its five, from one

no honourable mentions as such

xp bottled it means to lose nerve, pretty much

they don't even clarify if it's Razz M'Tazz or Los Angeles style salsa

makes it difficult to fact check the joke and therefore confirm it is indeed funny

Maybe it's bc The Office thread was recently bumped, but I could easily imagine David Brent delivering the salsa joke

like delivering an actual jar of sauce or the joke which altho clearly about the dance also seems to have mightily distracted ppl

factual precision is the first rule of comedy

a

jarring

selection of dance

indeed

lol

that made me laugh harder than any of the jokes on the list, which is to say, moderately

agreed that a single person giving themselves a joke comedy to perform comedy with is the worst thing about all of this

or should I have said

MILDly

a joke /name/

sorry the last thing i want is to further stir the pot here

of SALSA

I wasn't sure if the salsa joke was going to have a punchline, but Alex really Snook it in there

I've confirmed that the first move of a salsa dance is a step forward. The third move is a step back. However, the second move is a "rock back". So I'd suggest "I’ve been taking non-sauce salsa dance lessons for months, but I just don’t feel like I’m progressing. It’s just one step forward, one rock back, and one step back." (Alec Snook w/ improvements from Sufjan Grafton)

fucking hell, a classic

you say tomato, i say that was not funny

BTW I checked and Zoe Coombs Marr's partner actually has seen Gaslight, so I'm lowering my rating for that one too

It's no longer a joke now, it's just an observation

a horse's mane is itself a fringe. the Gaelic for "ate a mane" is "ed in fringe"

am i wrong to assume that the jokes are edited and condensed for print? like why even fret about whether it would work in person or not, you're voting for the idea of the joke aiui

the fact it also means a sauce is absolutely irrelevant

Well yes, that was uh a weird take on it.

10. Keir Starmer looks like an AI-generated image of a substitute teacher. (Sophie Duker)

feels unfair for them to include this one because, as other people have observed, it's not a 'joke' in the same way the others are, and all of the good insulting comments about Keir Starmer's appearance have already been done by people on twitter, you'd have to come up with something truly exceptional for it to have an impact at this stage

'sailed through' wins just on simplicity

― jmm, Monday, 19 August 2024 15:33 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I bet if you went through all these lists over the years that there's a strong inverse correlation between number of words and how near they get to being almost funny

most of these channel felonious

“Pints, gallons, litres”

is this a UK idiom i'm not familiar with?

Popular saying whilst at the urinal, iirc

it's also a subtle and clever play on the transition from the English system to the metric system, and became a popular expression of dissent among brexit supporters

"speaks volumes" is the idiom

the other part being the literal interpretation of the idiom is the entire joke. how could this work if the first part was also an idiom?

It's a bit confusing because we usually expect the literalization of the idiom to be in the punchline. Here it feels like the setup and punchline have been reversed. You could do more or less the same joke:

"My dad used to say something which I think speaks volumes: 'Pints, gallons, litres!'"

But that formulation doesn't land very well.

xp because a properly written joke should make sense? i.e., if he's drudging up some adage his father used to say, it should be an actual thing that a human would say

Yeah it’s a forced setup

my dad always used to say "cocks, frocks, socks"

i guess i don't understand what edinburgh fringe is because my impression was that it was mostly made up of one-person shows that are confessional/autobiographical and "funny" but in a self-deprecating/analyzing way that is more clever than funny. but then these lists come out and it seems like the shows are just people rattling off 100 terrible pun-based one-liners in a row.

Your assessment of the Fringe is largely correct, with the caveat that I think that is what most stand up anywhere is in 2024 - perhaps not always overtly confessional, but usually focused on narrative and situations rather than old school jokes - and whether it pans out to "more clever than funny" comes down to the performer. Probably most of these are deployed more as filler, something to lead into longer riffs about a certain subject, and so it's pretty weird for the Guardian to paint them as the main attraction. I'd suggest that maybe this is just an outdated tradition that the paper carries on with due to inertia, except I don't know how long it's been running and I'm unsure whether the Fringe used to be joke heavier in 2004 or even 1994.

Which is why I think soref is OTM about the Duker line, it's obv not meant to be a joke (it is meant to be funny and doesn't do too great at that), it's a random line.

If I did a Fringe set I'd definitely have a bit in it that's like "any single line from any set is at risk of ending up in that Guardian list of best lines. well, except this one." *pause* "you know what to do"

imago mercifully egged to death

If I did a Fringe set, all day long, I'd biddy biddy bum

xp because a properly written joke should make sense? i.e., if he's drudging up some adage his father used to say, it should be an actual thing that a human would say

― budo jeru, Monday, August 19, 2024 11:36 AM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think a properly written joke needs to make sense. It comes across as absurd in isolation, but maybe it had backstory about his dad working at a milk factory farm or something. I'm not sure any backstory would help the digestion of these potato chip one liners, though.

i guess i don't understand what edinburgh fringe is because my impression was that it was mostly made up of one-person shows that are confessional/autobiographical and "funny" but in a self-deprecating/analyzing way that is more clever than funny. but then these lists come out and it seems like the shows are just people rattling off 100 terrible pun-based one-liners in a row.

Give me terrible pun-based one liners over "one-person shows that are confessional/autobiographical and "funny" but in a self-deprecating/analyzing way that is more clever than funny" any day of the week.

There's a lot of Cannon & Ball available for free on youtube Tom if you fancy it.

i guess i don't understand what edinburgh fringe is because my impression was that it was mostly made up of one-person shows that are confessional/autobiographical and "funny" but in a self-deprecating/analyzing way that is more clever than funny. but then these lists come out and it seems like the shows are just people rattling off 100 terrible pun-based one-liners in a row.

(the pedantic bit) The thing about the Fringe, is that it's enormous, the largest arts festival in the world. 50,000 performances of 3,000 shows in 300 venues. If you split it into its component parts, it would be the biggest comedy festival in the world and the biggest theatre festival in the world - I'm not sure about cabaret / dance / spoken word, but I suspect it'd be up there in all of them.

That said, yeah there is definitely an "Edinburgh show format" - Some talk about what's being going on with them this year, a framing bit that they may come back to, then some jokes and observational stuff (some of it relatable / some of it not relatable because they've been going through something) and an emotional ending, possibly coming back to a repeated comic 'bit' but in new light. I understand it was Sean Hughes that basically invented this in 1990, and people do it to get what he got - the festival prize, yeah, but also the chance to prove that you're likeable enough and interesting enough to get your own sitcom.

(incidentally I'm pretty sure if someone did manage an hour of great one-liners, they'd win all the prizes with little complaint - that shit's hard)

I actually went to see Sarah Keyworth's show this afternoon - the line is in the context of them setting out that the show is about gender stuff and their family and the top surgery that they had this year.

(lol I took forever to write this and Daniel is OTM)

I think I liked the fake list better overall

But the highs are higher here

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

I’m an extremely emotionally needy non-binary person. My pronouns are “there, there”. (Sarah Keyworth)

i'm strongly considering the possibility that this might actually be a worse pronoun joke than the attack helicopter joke

my new baseline for jokes is comparing it to the joke that joker the harlequin tells the penguin in _the people's joker_. i'd say some of the jokes here are worse than that joke. not all of them.