German Humour; It's No Laughing Matter

But I hardly thought it required a poll to come to that conclusion.

The same poll however puts us Brits at just fourth in the funny stakes, one behind America in fact. Which, as any self respecting Brit will tell you, is nothing short of a pure bloody insult. Taking your average Yankee Doodle, if humour isn't possessed of all the subtlety of a police baton at a First Amendment rally, the response is invariably, yer wot?

A typical example at the bottom of the page.

While they might be world leaders in many fields, the Germans have never really led the way in comedy.

Now an international poll appears to reinforce the humourless national stereotype after concluding that Germany is the least funny country in the world.

More than 30,000 people in 15 countries were asked to rank the nations with the worst sense of humour and Germany came out on top.

But before Britons become too smug, the survey did not rank the UK a great deal higher, placing us fourth behind Russia and Turkey.

Countries including Canada, Holland and Belgium all performed better than the UK when it came to demonstrating wit.

The survey, which was carried out for the social networking site Badoo.com found that most people agreed with the national stereotype that Germans were weak at comedy.

Many of those responding to the survey said they saw Germans as being more focused on rationality and efficiency rather than humour.

In May 2007 the German magazine Spiegel commented that the British had an image of the typical German as a “mercilessly efficient but humourless engineer”.

But defenders of German comedy insist the stereotype is unfair and the structure of the language means many jokes from the English language do not translate easily.

Lloyd Price, the spokesman for Badoo.com, which carried out the survey said: “Germans are brilliant at so many things, including making cars and beating us at football. Unfortunately telling jokes isn’t always one of them.

“If only there was a comedy World Cup, we might stand a chance against them.”

Commenting on Britain’s poor showing in the survey Mr Price said the international perception of the UK was a country whose people were uptight and reserved.

He said: “If we’re no good at football and no good at comedy either, it’s a bit of a pie in the face for us.”

The top ten least witty countries according to the survey were:

1 Germany

2 Russia

3 Turkey

4 Britain

5 America

6 France

7 Poland

8 Belgium

9 Holland

10 Canada
Telegraph

Original source of poll, Badoo.com

SAN FRANCISCO MAN BECOMES FIRST AMERICAN TO GRASP SIGNIFICANCE OF IRONY–

Jay Fullmer, 38, yesterday became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony. "It was weird," Fullmer said. "I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and he pulled a face and said, "Great weather, eh?" and I thought "Wait a minute, no way is it great weather." Fullmer then realised that the other man’s "mistake" was in fact deliberate. Fullmer, who is 39 next month and married with two children, aged 8 and 3, plans to use irony himself in future. "I’m, like, using it all the time," he said. "Last weekend I was grilling steaks and I burned them to shit and I said "Hey, great weather!".

Originally part of this post.