1000 free jokes and a personal look at LaughLab
Richard Wiseman
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1000 free jokes and a personal look at LaughLab
richard wiseman<br>Aug 05, 2026
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I’ve conducted lots of strange research over the years, but one project always sparks the most questions: My quest for the world’s funniest joke.<br>It began when the British Association for the Advancement of Science asked for a project to celebrate National Science Year. I suggested searching for the world’s funniest joke, they said yes, and we promptly built the LaughLab website where visitors could submit their favorite jokes and rate others. The core team consisted of psychologist Emma Greening, tech guru Jed Everitt, and myself.<br>Here are a few surreal moments from the project, some of my favourite lines and a free download of 1000 jokes!<br>The Giant Chicken<br>To launch the project, we staged a photo-op with me standing next to a giant chicken. One photographer shouted, “Can the guy playing the scientist move to the left?”<br>“I am the scientist,” I called back, looking sheepishly at the giant chicken.
Did you hear about the man who was proud of finishing a jigsaw puzzle in 30 minutes because it said ‘5 - 6 years on the box?<br>Freud’s Couch<br>Sigmund Freud was fascinated by humour, writing Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious in 1905. We asked The Freud Museum in London if we could stage another photo-op by having a clown lay on Freud’s iconic couch. They kindly said yes, and I can still remember sitting in the chair once occupied by history’s most famous psychiatrist while staring at a man in a blue wig, greasepaint, and massive red shoes.
A dog goes into a telegraph office and writes: “Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof, Woof.”<br>The clerk says, “You can send another ‘Woof’ for the same price.”<br>The dog looks confused: “But that would make no sense at all.”<br>Weasel Sabotage<br>Midway through, we noticed a sudden flood of jokes ending with: “There’s a weasel chomping on my privates.”<br>Humorist Dave Barry had written about LaughLab in The International Herald Tribune and urged his readers to submit weasel punchlines while giving them top ratings.
A guy goes to the doctor for a checkup. At the end, he asks how long he has left to live. The doctor says, “Ten.”<br>Confused, the man asks, “Ten what? Years? Months? Weeks?”<br>The doctor replies, “Nine, Eight, Seven...”
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The World’s Funniest Joke<br>After gathering 40,000 jokes rated by over 350,000 people across 70 countries, we were awarded a Guinness World Record and appeared on the cover of The New Yorker.<br>The top joke voted by Americans was a nod to Dave Barry’s prank:<br>At the parade, the Colonel asks: “Major Barry, what the devil’s wrong with Sergeant Jones’ platoon? They seem to be twitching and jumping about.”<br>“Well sir,” says Major Barry, “there seems to be a weasel chomping on his privates.”<br>However, the overall winning joke was submitted by psychiatrist Gurpal Gosall:<br>Two hunters are out in the woods when one collapses. He isn’t breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy calls emergency services: “My friend is dead! What can I do?”<br>The operator says, “Calm down. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.”<br>There is silence, then a gunshot. Back on the phone, the guy says, “OK, now what?”<br>To celebrate, my then PhD student Ciaran O’Keeffe put on a chicken suit, and we drove through London with the winning joke printed on a massive banner.
You can download 1000 clean jokes taken from our research archive here!<br>And read more about the project in my book Quirkology and online here.<br>What’s your all-time favourite joke?<br>Drop it in the comments below! Keep it clean!
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