British Comedy Guide

Some jokes

Hi all, just a few jokes I wrote recently. I welcome any feedback. I was thinking of either putting together a small routine for a low key stand up and maybe I could fit some of them in somewhere or else using them for a personal web page/podcast or YouTube. I think some would need a bit more work but was wondering if any have potential.

1)My brother was a I.T support technician
until a teapot fell on his head. (high tea)

2) My father told me I had to sleep in the same
bed as his brother... as there wasn't any room to
put the photocopier anywhere else in the house.

3) (Bill Gates in playground as a child.)
Other Kid: Ugh how can you make shapes out of
your snot
My crows soft

4) Did you hear about the farmer whose cock was more hen pecked than he was?

5) What did one twin new born say to the other
Twin 1: Hey how come you've got the big booby.
You left it too late. Sorry.
What!
YOU LEFT TIT! TOO LATE! SORRY!

6) I wasn't very bright as a kid.
I never wore shorts after they sent
me to a school for people with special knees.

7) Im trying to lose weight
I keep a little Japanese man locked in my cellar
with no food.
I'm on a starve asian diet.

8) My dog likes to lick the cats arse
Much like my priest...
Hes got very catholic tastes. (cat hole lick)

9) I hate historic dramas. Everytime I watch
Downton Abbey I get period pains. If your groaning
at that joke you know how I feel when I watch Downton Abbey

10) I've tried to sell ABC some funny sketches
about an evil gang that steals eyeballs for the
transplant market. I was told to trim them down
to make it more profitable but I was wondering
if anyone on the forum could tell me which bits
are the cornier(cornea).

11) I sometimes work in a cafe with my girlfriend
and I sent her to the loo with a bottle.
Whats that for? she said.
I said I need some more
chickpea for the soup.

12) Me and my business associate recently went straight. I said we are no longer partners in crime. He said does that make us civil partners?

13) Safestyle UK are getting a little bullyboy with
their marketing tactics. They recently stuck stickers on all the windows on our street saying. Your windows may not be genuine. Please ring this number to find out if your windows have the genuine advantage.

Quote: tony kay @ September 3 2013, 11:14 PM BST

Hi all, just a few jokes I wrote recently. I welcome any feedback. I was thinking of either putting together a small routine for a low key stand up and maybe I could fit some of them in somewhere or else using them for a personal web page/podcast or YouTube. I think some would need a bit more work but was wondering if any have potential.

1)My brother was a I.T support technician
until a teapot fell on his head. (high tea)

Works if you can do an rp English accent

2) My father told me I had to sleep in the same
bed as his brother... as there wasn't any room to
put the photocopier anywhere else in the house.

Nah

3) (Bill Gates in playground as a child.)
Other Kid: Ugh how can you make shapes out of
your snot
My crows soft

Nah

4) Did you hear about the farmer whose cock was more hen pecked than he was?

Potential but rework it so someone's asking the farmer why he.s having a chicken peck his penis and its because his shreiwsh wife won't f**k him

5) What did one twin new born say to the other
Twin 1: Hey how come you've got the big booby.
You left it too late. Sorry.
What!
YOU LEFT TIT! TOO LATE! SORRY!

6) I wasn't very bright as a kid.
I never wore shorts after they sent
me to a school for people with special knees.

7) Im trying to lose weight
I keep a little Japanese man locked in my cellar
with no food.
I'm on a starve asian diet.

8) My dog likes to lick the cats arse
Much like my priest...
Hes got very catholic tastes. (cat hole lick)

9) I hate historic dramas. Everytime I watch
Downton Abbey I get period pains. If your groaning
at that joke you know how I feel when I watch Downton Abbey

10) I've tried to sell ABC some funny sketches
about an evil gang that steals eyeballs for the
transplant market. I was told to trim them down
to make it more profitable but I was wondering
if anyone on the forum could tell me which bits
are the cornier(cornea).

11) I sometimes work in a cafe with my girlfriend
and I sent her to the loo with a bottle.
Whats that for? she said.
I said I need some more
chickpea for the soup.

12) Me and my business associate recently went straight. I said we are no longer partners in crime. He said does that make us civil partners?

13) Safestyle UK are getting a little bullyboy with
their marketing tactics. They recently stuck stickers on all the windows on our street saying. Your windows may not be genuine. Please ring this number to find out if your windows have the genuine advantage.

Some of them aren't bad but others feel a little forced and 10 puns in a row is a shooting offence in some countries

I wonder if with number 10 where you mention ABC whether you may have copied this from an American comedian.

Some of them are OK. The problem with puns is the best possible outcome is a groan. The worst is that they start throwing things. That isn't a good return for a stand up.

In my relatively limited experience, a routine made up from a load of one liners isn't very successful.

You need to build the story and the anticipation.

One satisfying orgasm is better than ten little shivers. Sure, they're OK intermittently, but you are always waiting for the real thing. The better the build up, the better the climax.

I have tried to think of a different analogy and can't. Sorry. :(

You've been here too long Jennie you're going native

Soon you'll be saying

M'lud you can aquit or eat my shit

Quote: Jennie @ September 3 2013, 11:31 PM BST

One satisfying orgasm is better than ten little shivers. Sure, they're OK intermittently, but you are always waiting for the real thing. The better the build up, the better the climax.

Welcome to the boards Dr Ruth Pleased

Quote: Shandonbelle @ September 3 2013, 11:53 PM BST

Welcome to the boards Dr Ruth Pleased

:D

Oh I love her. She lost her virginity on a haystack in Israel - terribly quaint. Not sure why I know that.

I honestly did try and think of an analogy that wasn't quite so crude. I couldn't. Sooty's right. Teary

Quote: Jennie @ September 3 2013, 11:57 PM BST

:D

She lost her virginity on a haystack in Israel

Couldn't have been very comfortable, what with all those needles.

thanks for the feedback. really amazed by how quickly people responded.
It is really useful to get honest feedback as I am totally new to anything like this.
It seems I am really addicted to puns. (well my own puns anyway).
I don't think I would perform these to the general public as they are but I enjoyed writing them.
Thanks Jennie, I think the comment about building up to an orgasm sounds like a fun challenge.
Sometime over the next few days I will try to write a short routine(1-2 minutes)(perhaps using one or two of my puns) I hope it won't come across as fake. I have never done anything like that before so it will be interesting and educational.
PS Chappers, the ABC reference does would come across as a bit random considering I am from England. I think I will change it to ITV although I might just retire that joke anyway. If any American comedian wants it they are welcome to it.

Quote: Jennie @ September 3 2013, 11:57 PM BST

:D

Oh I love her. She lost her virginity on a haystack in Israel *

You find your needle in a haystack, your going to get a prick!

Maybe she thought she was "Jew" a good seeing too!

Thank God it wasn't "Rape" Seed!

was she trying to make a follow up to "the mount of Olive!"

Better then most girls who tend to lose it to a bad boy on bail!

It was a bit of a "Corny" way to lose it!

The next day she called her friend back home and told her she'd had sex in Israel, "Tel Aviv" her friend said! "Tell EVERYONE" she replied!

Quote: Jennie @ September 3 2013, 11:31 PM BST

Some of them are OK. The problem with puns is the best possible outcome is a groan. The worst is that they start throwing things. That isn't a good return for a stand up.

Sorry but as someone who makes a living (if you can call it that) from doing puns, this is simply not true, the best possible outcome is lots and lots and lots of laughter (watch a Tim Vine or Milton Jones DVD and listen to the audience).

The trouble is that when people think of "puns" they invariably think of "bad puns", ones which are tortured and have a set up which is too convoluted (like, I'm afraid, a lot of the ones in the original post).

To get the most out of jokes featuring puns, the pun has to be hidden slightly, you can't just have jokes which follow this format;

Set up, set up, set up, bridge, tenuous pun as punchline.

Especially not if you phrase it in the very traditional "question and answer" joke style.

Also, brevity is the sole of wit, as some playwright from the West Midlands once said. Cut out any extraneous words, if it doesn't add to the joke, it subtracts (although, like everything in comedy, this is not a hard and fast rule, but I find that for 99% of jokes it works).

e.g. 6) I wasn't very bright as a kid.
I never wore shorts after they sent
me to a school for people with special knees.

As a child I had weird legs, so my parents sent me to school for kids with special knees

As soon as Jennie wrote that I expected a visit from TC. :D

Quote: Jennie @ September 3 2013, 11:31 PM BST

Some of them are OK. The problem with puns is the best possible outcome is a groan. The worst is that they start throwing things. That isn't a good return for a stand up.

I think I disagree with this, I'd say a pun can be a beautiful thing; unfortuntely, these either don't work or aren't quite ready yet. I think the OP probably knew that, because they've put the explanations in brackets.

There are defintely good gags in there, though, but they need to be rearranged to bring them out. I can definitely imagine a contemporary Smith & Jones sketch, with someone piling scones and doilies on to a computer, ending up with the punchline, "Oh no, I'm fropm the *high tea* helpdesk".

Also, and this is the golden rule with successful puns and is the one that most often makes a "punny" joke fail, is that the pun has to work and be logical for BOTH premises of the joke, i.e it has to make sense in the way the listener originally thinks the meaning is going AND the way it goes after the twist.

For instance;

3) (Bill Gates in playground as a child.)
Other Kid: Ugh how can you make shapes out of
your snot
My crows soft

Okay, right "Microsoft" is Bill Gates's company, it's something we've all heard of, so that's great for a set up to a joke, but what is "My crow's soft"? Has anyone, ever, in the history of mankind used a sentence with those words arranged like that?

Logically the joke fails because the twisted premise has no meaning, it makes no sense.

The pun or wordplay has to work for both premises.

Quote: Tony Cowards @ September 4 2013, 10:36 AM BST

The pun or wordplay has to work for both premises.

Nice explanation - I could see that it did not work but did not understand why.

You live and learn.

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