Horsing Around

Do jokes work as well in Farsi as in French? LUKE SLATTERY pulls up a bar stool and delivers the punchline.

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I once travelled with a chap who wore just the one pair of shoes. And one coat. He’d crammed all his possessions into a seven kilogram carry-on. I favour a bigger suitcase – three pairs of shoes – but for the past few years I’ve travelled the world with just the one joke.

In a sense the joke isn’t really the joke; the funny part is the translation. It’s the simplest gag: “Horse walks into a bar. Barman says, ‘Why the long face?’” 

It’s so simple, I’ve had no trouble relaying it in French and Italian. Will it work as easily in Farsi, Inuit, or Bahasa? Only time and altitude miles will tell.

My aim to travel the world on just the one gag may seem like a frivolous exercise, but its real purpose is to winkle out answers to some deeper questions. Is humour culture-specific? Or is there some comic archetype hard-wired into us all? What, in any event, is a joke?