The jokes that have made people laugh for thousands of years

Some of the oldest jokes in history are still in use today.

It is striking that the earliest recorded joke is about toilet humour. The earliest jokes we have on record suggest that crude jokes stand the test of time. 

Flatulence, for example, is funny because it shows our "uncontrollable physicality".

• Finding a universally funny joke is challenging.
• Effective jokes are a "benign violation" always walking a delicate balancing act between too soft and too extreme.
• The purpose of a benign violation is to elicit laughter and disgust at the same time.
• Jokes in the times of all-powerful medieval monarchs were a risky business.
• Many of the oldest written jokes were scribbled in the margins of ornate early Latin Bibles.
• Raw intelligence is the most effective indicator of whether someone is funny.

Stand-up comedy in recent years has evolved at speed. Kylie Brakeman was one of the early adopters of a new kind of observational comedy that emerged at the start of the pandemic. Her to-camera Twitter videos have attracted millions of views and kicked off an era in which the day's events can be parodied within minutes.

Online comedians are increasingly at the bleeding edge of satire. If something happened in the news you could jump on it right away. It's an advantage that online comedians have.