Michael Grade & The World's Oldest Joke
- TV documentary
- BBC Four
- 2013
- 1 episode
Michael Grade traces the history of the joke with a little help from a host of historians, academics, comedy experts and comedians. Features Michael Grade, Colin R Campbell, Ken Dodd, Tim Vine, Barry Cryer and more.
Key details
- Genre
- Documentary
- Broadcast
- 2013
- Channel
- BBC Four
- Episodes
- 1
- Features
- Michael Grade, Colin R Campbell, Ken Dodd, Tim Vine, Barry Cryer, Robert Orben, Ann Featherstone, Oliver Double and Paul Mcdonald
- Directors
- Lucy Kenwright
- Producers
- Lucy Kenwright and Caroline Wright
Fart gags, toilet humour, sex, nagging wives - no, not the set list for a Bernard Manning gig, but subjects that the Sumerians, Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Victorians all made jokes about.
In Michael Grade And The World's Oldest Joke, the presenter traces the history of the joke with a little help from a host of historians, academics, comedy experts and comedians including Ken Dodd, Tim Vine and Barry Cryer.
Along the way he discovers what tickled the Tudors, ribbed the Romans and made Renaissance wits roar as he sets out to discover whether jokes come and go with the rise and fall of civilisations or whether we're still laughing at the same things our ancestors did.
Additional details
- Production
- Studio
- Picture
- Colour
Broadcast details
- First broadcast
- Wednesday 6th March 2013 at 9pm on BBC Four
- Episode length
- 1 hour
- All previous repeats
-
- Wednesday 19th February 2014 at 11:40pm on BBC4
- Thursday 20th June 2013 at 12:30am on BBC4
- Thursday 7th March 2013 at 2:45am on BBC4