Does your listicle bite?

Peter Lalor on online comedy and classic punchlines

Artwork by Fisher Classics

Strikes me that while angertainment has found its natural home on social media, comedy too is thriving because of the medium. Comedians get great cut through on TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the like. They’re an antidote to all the angry and depressing bullshit.

People want a dose of sugar with the salt and not all of us are besotted with cat videos.

There’s an Irish bloke called Garry Noone (and I don’t know if he is No One or Noone) who popped up in the past six months doing beautiful little skits. A musician from Galway, he has become an overnight success attracting over a million followers on two of the apps. Comedians slogged it on the circuit for years to get that sort of following, now a fat, bearded bloke from County Mayo can get there by bashing out a few poorly produced videos on his mobile phone from his home.

Anyway, I lose hours watching highlight clips from various programs like 8 out of 10 Cats, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Seinfeld, Curb, Harry Enfield ...

And I love a classic piece of joke telling, which got me thinking about what are the best jokes ever?

Perfect listicle fodder, eh?

Before proceeding to said listicle I have to recount an infamous episode, played out in a sports department in the not so distant past when a digital marketing guru was holding one of those new world order meetings journalists loved so much: this week’s new way to suck a hundred year old egg.

This person was very keen on “listicles” and said the sports department needed to engage with the new phenomenon to engage its readers.

The already irritated sports editor in question grew even more irritable over the use of this word. Fair enough too. Listicle sounds like the medical term for a listless gonad (for sure it would be the left one).

The sports editor insisted listicle was just another word for list, the person who knew more insisted they were very different things. There was tension and neither backed down.

The old school editor said that if what the new media type said was true then he should take no offence at being described as a “cunticle” and promptly stormed out of the room.

Best jokes ever?

My all time favourite is the brilliant Peter Sellers “does your dog bite” joke from the Pink Panther movie.

No matter how many times I see this joke it makes me laugh. Someone said they were in a cinema at the movie and the audience laughed so long and hard the producers missed a trick by not giving themselves a chance to recover before proceeding to the next scene.

It is a simple but brilliant joke and one that runs through my head every time I see someone asking to pat a stranger’s dog. The confusion around the word “room” is also excellent.

Norm MacDonalds Moth Joke is an old and essentially simple gag.

There is, for me, no greater piece of joke telling. I was belly laughing rewatching it for the millionth time. The ability to weave Russian existentialism into a corny gag is one thing, it is another to stretch what should be a 20 second tale out to five minutes on live television and even more impressive given MacDonald was not due to be on that part of the program.

Something had gone wrong with the planned segment. Conan sprung it on him before the ad break, MacDonald said he had nothing prepared and asked Conan how long he would have to fill for.

Part of the brilliance of this telling is the sense that it is a comedian making it up as he goes. A story he claims he heard from the limo driver on the way to the studio. He is on a high wire, on live television and in his element. MacDonald is an iconoclast, a comedians comedian with a mischievous predisposition. You can see he loves the tension he creates as he meanders toward the inevitable punch line.

Conan _ who like all the night show hosts rates Norm among the very highest rung of comedians _ explained the background in a clip I came across recently.

I’ll give you one more icle for the list.

Recently I posted a link to Bob Einstein’s outrageously bawdy joke from Curb Your Enthusiasm and here’s another excellent one in the same mould from a cast chat about the show.

Part of its humour is the fact it cuts through the self indulgence of other characters who’ve been taking it all a bit too seriously to that point.

He tells the same gag in an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee along with an excellent old one about a Jewish tie salesman and a thirsty Arab.

I’d love to know what your favourite jokes are because I’m in danger of wearing all of mine out, but before I go here is Norm MacDonald’s infamous Dirty Johnny joke just for the hell of it.

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