The Funniest Joke in the World

Framed as a wartime documentary, the sketch follows joke writer Ernest Scribbler, who dies laughing moments after composing the funniest joke ever written; his mother finds the page and meets the same fate. A Scotland Yard inspector braves the house to retrieve it, shielded by mournful gramophone music and chanting constables, but collapses on the doorstep. The Army tests the joke on a hapless corporal, has it translated into German one word per translator, and deploys it in the Ardennes, where enemy soldiers fall about in fatal fits. A captured British officer uses it to escape a Gestapo interrogation, while Germany's own counter-jokes, including a radio broadcast to a puzzled British couple, fall flat. After the war joke warfare is outlawed and the last copy is buried beneath a memorial to the unknown joke.

This sketch marks the first appearance of Graham Chapman's Colonel. A shorter remake appears in the 1971 film And Now for Something Completely Different.