So two Germans walk into a bar… not funny, right?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/02/2018 (3080 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s official — Germany is the least funny country in the world.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: “Germans aren’t funny! Wow! Knock me over with a frankfurter. I have always thought of Germans as being a veritable laugh riot. Who knew?”

Ha ha ha! I am, of course, kidding around in a light-hearted manner typical of us wacky Canadians, all of whom, along with the ability to skate like the wind and enjoy the sweet taste of maple syrup, are blessed with a rapier-like wit that is the envy of less-humorous nations.

But the sad truth is, according to news reports emailed to me by my editor, an international study carried out for the social-networking site Badoo.com asked 30,000 people in 15 countries to rank the nations with the worst sense of humour.

As we have already discussed, the survey determined, when it comes to lacking a funnybone, Germany is No. 1.

You would think this might have something to do with the fact that some people are inclined to be unamused by any nation they blame for starting more than one world war, but you would be horribly wrong.

It turns out many of those responding to the Badoo.com survey supported the stereotype wherein Germans are seen as being ruthlessly efficient as opposed to rib-ticklingly jocular, if you catch our drift.

“Germans are brilliant at so many things, including making cars and beating us at football,” Lloyd Price, a spokesman for Badoo.com, which carried out the survey, told Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper. “Unfortunately telling jokes isn’t always one of them.

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

Before everyone involved with the German pavilion at Folklorama marches on my house with pitchforks and torches, allow me to say that I have always been a fan of the, um, antiseptic sting of traditional German humour.

In fact, the first joke I taught my son to tell, when he was around five, is a classic German knee-slapper that goes a little something like this: “Zwei Erdnüsse wurden auf der Straße… und einer von ihnen war ein gesalzen!”

Again, ha ha ha! I’ll bet right now you are laughing so uncontrollably that you are in danger of wetting the living-room carpet. Unless, of course, you do not speak German, in which case you may prefer the joke in its English form, which goes as follows: “Two peanuts were walking down the street (dramatic pause) and one of them was a salted!”

Get it? A salted? It sounds like one of the peanuts was assaulted, right? I mean, what is not funny about that? If you are not actually laughing at the moment, you should read that joke again, but this time read it out loud using a wildly exaggerated and angry German accent. You could read the phone book in that accent and it would be (bad word) hilarious.

I should also point out that one of my favourite comedians years ago was a guy named Klaus Myers, who billed himself as “Germany’s Top Comedian.” Employing the accent we have already discussed, he would begin his act by saying: “The biggest obstacle I face is the stereotype that Germans are obsessed with mathematical uniformity. All right, Joke No. 1: ‘Take my wife… I COMMAND YOU!’”

Again, if you are not laughing right now, I will assume you are German, or possibly Canadian, because (brace yourselves for a shock) the survey placed the True North in the No. 10 slot in its list of the least witty countries.

Sure, we ranked ahead of the Russians and the Turks and the Brits, but still… we were rated (Gasp!) as one of the 10 least funny nations in the world.

Speaking as a marginally amusing Canuck, I find this both shocking and disgraceful.

Were it not for our brilliant senses of humour, none of us would be able to survive living in a country where it is winter for nine months of the year and the national pastime involves firing frozen discs of rubber at other people’s heads.

If Canada was not a hilarious nation we could never have come up with some of the world’s greatest jokes, such as Justin Bieber.

Sadly, not everyone agrees. I refer here to my hero, American humour columnist Dave Barry, who several years ago wrote a column about a scientific project called Laugh Lab.

Laugh Lab was a project wherein a group of U.K. scientists devoted themselves to tracking down the world’s funniest joke.

In their quest, the scientists collected more than 10,000 jokes online and had them ranked by 100,000 people who visited their website. The top Canadian entry did not impress Dave, who famously wrote: “I’ll tell you who else has a serious humour deficiency: Canada. I say this because, according to Laugh Lab, the following joke was rated highest by Canadians: “What do you call a woman who can balance four pints of beer on her head? Beatrix.”

“Get it? ‘Beatrix!’ Which sounds sort of, but not quite enough, like ‘Beer Tricks!’”

Ha ha! Maybe it would be funnier if they called her “Minton.”

For the record, the “Minton” remark was a reference to another lame joke wherein a dog named “Minton” did something bad and … OK, even if I explain the rest of that joke you are not going to find it funny, so let’s not bother.

In conclusion, what with being a manly Canadian humorist, I would like to leave you with what I believe is the single funniest line most patriotic guys of my gender have ever heard, namely: “Zieh an meinem Finger.”

You can Google the translation yourselves. Auf Wiedersehen!

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca