Funniest joke at this year's Edinburgh fringe - 2019 edition

These are a big step up on previous years, with four I laughed at. Going for Richard Stotts’s antidepressants joke.

the first four are not too bad

the last six are abysmal

wait number 3 is also bad

The cows joke is funny in an 'eyeroll-inducing funny-not-funny dad joke' sorta way that I can appreciate. Otherwise, ehhhhhhhhhhh

I may have noted this in previous years, but it feels like most of these folks have a punchline they're way too married to and that they insist on building a joke around no matter how torturous the process or malformed the ultimate product.

tbh 1 is p awful too. 2 and 4 are the only acceptable jokes here. will vote for the cow rounding

"20 cows" took me a second and wasn't 100% obvious, so I guess that.

The cowboy one is best. If 3 is one of the best 10 jokes at this year's Fringe then they should bother holding it next year.

"Equestrian" is the worst joke I've ever heard.

Trying my hand at the Edinburgh style

(Something something dyslexia, something about asking persimmon...I know there's a joke here somewhere, just need to invent an implausible scenario)

C'mon, the escape course one is good

(not as good as the cow joke but still)

"Equestrian" is the worst joke I've ever heard.

Makes it funny by default. I voted for it.

Thread needs a trigger warning

Isn't 'Edinburgh Fringe' enough of a trigger warning?

I hope someone at some point got onstage at Edinburgh and joked about getting their bangs cut specially for the festival.

Roy Roger's horse gets up about half an hour before he wakes. etc.

these are good

the fact that you are allowed pretend your name is olaf falafel and still take part is a far bigger problem

'I knew it was a bad idea to do a voiceover audition while recovering from a cold. Someone overheard the director saying I came over a little hoarse and the authorities took my pony away.'

I'm sorry.

Maybe I’m feeling charitable, but I thought most of these were passably good. The Eton one made me actually laugh though so I will vote for that. I don’t understand the Brexit joke - what does it mean?

Keep it up. We'll soon have enough material to inaugurate the 'Funniest joke in the "Funniest joke at this year's Edinburgh fringe - 2019 edition" poll thread'.

i ran into teresa may the other day i said to her "hallo mrs may! what are you doing with yourself these days?" and she said "poo pee poo sick ewww bogeys"

- rupert gainswiggle

voted for cows

I read an article about the Titanic the other day and I though it was like Brexit

- Tilly Fukkstig

Have you ever thought about how they always get the right amount of sleeves on to a jumper? Every time. Brilliant.

- Shawun Rh#d

Would see a set by Shawun Rh#d.

the cow and thesaurus jokes are stolen

the Eton one aiui forms part of a set about the comedian's actual education at Eton

cows joke is dumb because he was just walking around in the vicinity of cowboys and also one of the cowboys asked for help rounding up 18 cows? it's such a strained premise that is clearly there just to get to the punchline. which i guess is true of all of these.

eton one isn't that funny but at least there's a hint of something there besides empty wordplay.

I actually laughed at the cow joke

jesus fuck it took literally 15 minutes of hard thinking to get the cow joke

I’m having a bad day folks

eton one isn't that funny but at least there's a hint of something there besides empty wordplay.

― na (NA), Monday, August 19, 2019 10:24 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean...he seems to have literally picked from a hat something which has doors.

These are jokes that eight-year-olds tell one another and think are the cleverest things in the world because the concepts of internal consistency and cause and effect and humor are still a little underformed in their juvenile brains.

'It became clear that I had the wrong idea about Narcotics Anonymous when I was the only one who showed up to the meeting with an unlabeled grab bag of drugs.'

antidepressants one is stolen and i mean like copyrighting water

heard escapology one before for sure

i think the cowboy one is prob best and don't think that the precarious likelihood of the six word setup matters too much tbh

I don’t understand the Brexit joke - what does it mean?

The Duke of Edinburgh crashed his car (into someone else's) this year.

Have you ever thought about how they always get the right amount of sleeves on to a jumper? Every time. Brilliant.

- Shawun Rh#d

― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Monday, August 19, 2019 3:17 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was my only actual lol of the thread ftr

Is it possible that the assemblers of these annual lists don't actually understand what a joke is supposed to do and that the material on the whole isn't quite this unfortunate?

xp thank you! Jokes that assume entry level news following don’t work on me.

it's got that #naileditagain newspaper cartoonist combining two unrelated news stories energy

I’ve never been to this festival but my impression is that very little of the comedy there, even the most traditionally gag-based stuff, is the kind of lazy “take any common expression and work backwards from there” style of joke-writing that always makes up most of this list

Equestrian guy has some much better ones, although many wouldn't work in just text alone.

https://youtu.be/c5UzbPsQ28Q

I just read these out to my sister and partner. They're much funnier when "delivered", obviously. All got laughs (hey it's the way I tell em etc), but 10 got the biggest.

(The runner up was 20 cows)

wait, how many people is that

I've got an Edinburgh Fringe-themed vacuum cleaner. It only turns on once a year but there's nothing that sucks harder.

I mean...he seems to have literally picked from a hat something which has doors.

And where the natural thing to discuss is how you open then - so, a smaller hat.

I’ve never been to this festival but my impression is that very little of the comedy there, even the most traditionally gag-based stuff, is the kind of lazy “take any common expression and work backwards from there” style of joke-writing that always makes up most of this list

I dunno, a lot of it* is "awkward premise regarding a flaw of the comedian & year-long project to address this" - "very visible relief that we can now segue into this year's jokes loosely linked" - "in the end it was the friends we made along the way"

*this might well just be the sort of comedians I see.

A cowboy asked me if I could help him round up some. I said, “Yes, of course, how many do you have?" He said "18!" I said "Ok that’s 20 then”

^^^this rewrite strips up the bad bit of the original

I like the cow joke, could pass for Steven Wright or Mitch Hedberg with the right delivery.

A cowboy asked me if I could help him round up 18 cows. I said, 'That's a strangely specific request to make out of the blue to a passing comedian. I'm afraid I'll have to decline, as I know nothing about rustling cattle and would likely be of no real help to you, but would you happen to have any good cow-related jokes you could share with me?'

Total Mitch.

a cowboy asked me if i could help him round up 18 cows

i didnt know him and in this economy and well you know the way things just are these days i made my excuses and left

i think of him, sometimes

and when i think of him, i think:

When the black herds of the rain were grazing,
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery hazes of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.

Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning sliver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain.

is this a pun

Do you feel punished?

Have you ever thought about how they always get the right amount of sleeves on to a jumper? Every time. Brilliant.

- Shawun Rh#d

― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Monday, August 19, 2019 3:17 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was my only actual lol of the thread ftr

― imago, Monday, August 19, 2019 8:35 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ditto, love this joke

It's funny because it's twill.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

in lieu of a 2020 thread or festival, let's celebrate the top ten Christmas cracker jokes of the year:

1. What is Dominic Cummings’ favourite Christmas song? Driving Home for Christmas.

2. Did you hear that production was down at Santa’s workshop? Many of his workers have had to Elf isolate!

3. Why didn’t Mary and Joseph make it to Bethlehem? All Virgin flights were cancelled.

4. Why are Santa’s reindeer allowed to travel on Christmas Eve? They have herd immunity.

5. Why did the pirates have to go into lockdown? Because the “Arrrr!” rate had risen.

6. Why is it best to think of 2020 like a panto? Because eventually, it’s behind you.

7. Why couldn’t Mary and Joseph join their work conference call? Because there was no Zoom at the inn.

8. Why can’t Boris Johnson make his Christmas cake until the last minute? He doesn’t know how many tiers it should have.

9. What do the Trumps do for Christmas dinner? They put on a super spread.

10. Which Christmas film was 30 years ahead of its time? Home Alone.

Lol at Zoom

#4 is cute.

Depressing on more levels than usual.

Moments of light relief have been hard to come by this year

Why did the chicken cross the road?
To buy an iPad so he could see his dying mother's face one last time!
https://www.animatedimages.org/data/media/1309/animated-laughing-image-0095.gifhttps://www.animatedimages.org/data/media/1309/animated-laughing-image-0095.gifhttps://www.animatedimages.org/data/media/1309/animated-laughing-image-0095.gifhttps://www.animatedimages.org/data/media/1309/animated-laughing-image-0095.gif

The cowboy one is best. If 3 is one of the best 10 jokes at this year's Fringe then they should bother holding it next year.

this is some next-level "be careful what you wish for"

Have you ever thought about how they always get the right amount of sleeves on to a jumper? Every time. Brilliant.

- Shawun Rh#d

Good ole shawun

Do Christmas cakes have tiers?

Only when they’re sad

S-tier Xmas cakes can cry, sure

Stier Karmer

Why did the chicken cross the road? To avoid the stinking mouldering corpse of Sir Kier Stiermer (who had been proper bludgeoned to death fer the lols Hah Hah Hah!)

somehow this year's are even worse than usual

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-62626292

1. "I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn't get pasta" - Masai Graham

2. "Did you know, if you get pregnant in the Amazon, it's next-day delivery" - Mark Simmons

3. "My attempts to combine nitrous oxide and Oxo cubes made me a laughing stock" - Olaf Falafel

4. "By my age, my parents had a house and a family, and to be fair to me, so do I - but it is the same house and it is the same family" - Hannah Fairweather

5. "I hate funerals - I'm not a mourning person" - Will Mars

6. "I spent the whole morning building a time machine, so that's four hours of my life that I'm definitely getting back" - Olaf Falafel

7. "I sent a food parcel to my first wife. FedEx" - Richard Pulsford

8. "I used to live hand to mouth. Do you know what changed my life? Cutlery" - Tim Vine

9. "Don't knock threesomes. Having a threesome is like hiring an intern to do all the jobs you hate" - Sophie Duker

10. "I can't even be bothered to be apathetic these days" - Will Duggan

I like some of them but the one that won is like a joke a 6 year old won a prize for when they sent it into the Beano in 1972.