Are these jokes judged as written submissions or based on live tellings? Because delivery matters a lot. If they were judged on delivery, then just reading the written jokes isn't the same thing at all.
All of them could be funny if told right.
5 offended me.
That was my strongest reaction. There's funnier stuff on Unfogged everyday, but I guess that's because we have all kinds of inside jokes.
I'm sure urple is right that with the right delivery any of these jokes could be funny. Some might require an anvil and a banana peel, but somehow or other, they could be made to work.
Knowing at least some of these comedians from the telly, it's hard to separate the voices from the lines. 2, 6 and 10 are the ones I think that'd be most likely to make me laugh.
re 2:
I think there's a poll for jokes told at the Festival, so I think the initial selection is from live performances, but how they then poll the public I've no idea.
Delivery, delivery, delivery.
And when you're not in a frigging joke contest it's timing, context, delivery, timing, timing, context, timing, delivery, timing. As proven by the thread attempting to resurrect Unfogged's "funniest" moments which as I recall was savaged (fairly appropriately) by urple.
5: It was funny, once you found out it offended me? Or was it funny right away, because you could imagine all the nerdy chess players being offended?
9 wasnt funny??!? Clearly, you dont get a ton of voice mails.
8 wasnt funny??!? Clearly, you dont have a frigid wife.
11:
Your delivery was much better than mine.
9: I exaggerated of course. But the existence of emotionally over-invested advocates is one element that can be exploited for humor. Also the societal imprimatur of "seriousness".
Times and delivery et cetera, what everybody else said. But evaluating them on the page, the jokes are fairly funny and are ranked more or less appropriately, excepting that 9 would have to get a hell of a lot of help from delivery and timing, because it's otherwise a bit lame. 8 and 10 both have a kind of vintage charm (Henny Youngman and Eighties Standup respectively), and 1 and 2 deserve the top spots (2 is a groaner, but in a good way).
14: Yeah, Joke 10 is ancient, and there are funnier versions of it too. I think this one was from "Dr. Katz":
A: My father was an alcoholic for a long time, but then he tried that thing with the needles...
B: Acupuncture?
A: Heroin
Obvs, delivery is essential there too, because you have to trail off convincingly after "needles", as though you really can't remember what it's called, and then when your interlocutor is saying "acupuncture", you have to almost cut them off by saying "heroin" very quickly.
Most of those jokes were not all that funny written down. 5, 7 and 8 sounded like real jokes. Buress's delivery is everything with his comedy, so hardly surprising that his falls flat on the page.
The worst joke is also hella old. Fell outta me pram laughing at that one.
I've always been partial to that old Emo Phillips gag:
"My girlfriend said she wanted a birthday present that was expensive and had no practical use. So I signed her up for chemotherapy."
There's also the bit in Rosemary Sutcliff's autobiography, Blue Remembered Hills, where she's lamenting the dearth of decent children's fiction that was considered appropriate for girls in her youth. It goes something like:
All the girls books were about little girls with abusive parents or consumption, sometimes both. There was one where the pathetic little heroine died after being beaten by her brutish father, after delivering a lecture on temperance to the customers of his pub.
That one had me laughing hysterically for like 20 minutes when I first read it.
I imagine #4 resonates more to an audience among which it's less the norm to own a car?
Nitpick- Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ie the fringe of the official Festival. It's not a festival of fringes.
Sarah Millican has an artless demeanor that I suspect would pull off #6 well.
19: Though it is technically the Edinburgh "Festival Fringe," "Fringe Festivals" are in fact a commonplace enough usage that the confusion shouldn't be unexpected. (But it is confusing; "Fringe Festivals" are usually focused on avant garde theatre and film.) Since the "Festival Fringe" is really the arts festival part of the Edinburgh Festival, they should maybe think about changing the name to "Edinburgh Arts Festival."
And then I said, "Excuse me, madam, I was talking to the duck."
re: 15
That comedian [responsible for 2] specialises in verbally clever groaners. It's very old-fashioned.
1 was misreported; the actual joke was "had eight characters in it", not "was eight charactes long".
7 is a Mitch Hedberg retread. Think of the one about hearing music. Or photographs of you when you were younger.
10 seems to be a variant on "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers."
Radio Scotland bad joke contest: Naked man goes to a doctor. "Don't tell me your symptoms" doc says. "I can see your nuts already".
via Flying_Rodent.
I am at the Fringe right now! I will let you know if I hear any good jokes. None so far.