Ian Hislop's Oldest Jokes episode guide

Radio factual
BBC Radio 4
2024
10 episodes (1 series)

The satirist examines the earliest examples of British humour. Features Ian Hislop.

Series 1

1. Wordplay

Monday 22^nd January 2024

Ian Hislop examines the earliest examples of British humour. He begins his quest in the dark ages, not known as a well-spring of comic opportunity. Nevertheless, in the pages of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum - Ecclesiastical History of England, there is wordplay. Not only that it's wordplay that obeys the comedy rule of three and it was potent enough to have a part in the naming of a nation. And how his fellow monks must have laughed.

3. The Drunk And The Bullion Stone

Wednesday 24^th January 2024

The subject of drink and drunkenness is always a contentious one, but however puritanical or sensitive the age, the figure of a drunk, from Joanna Lumley's riotous Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous to Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff has been a regular feature of comedy. And as it turns out, you can go back further still to find the depiction of a comic drunk. Ian's in Scotland to see The Bullion Stone, a 10th century Pictish carving now on display in the National Museum of Scotland.

Catch-up

BBC Sounds

Ian Hislop's Oldest Jokes

Series 1

1. Wordplay

2. Double Entendre

3. The Drunk And The Bullion Stone

4. Visual Humour And Misericords

5. The Heege Manuscript

6. Animals And The Aberdeen Bestiary

7. Parody And Sir Topaz

8. Any Women Here?

9. Who's De Hoeghe?

10. Comic Song

Catch-up

Series 1

Catch-up

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