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March 28, 2024, 09:07:53 AM

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Truly pathetic attempts at humour

Started by Tikwid, July 08, 2017, 01:49:21 PM

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Tikwid

I'm not just talking about yer average standups bombing or yer typical so-bad-it's-good shlock repurposed years later as anti-comedy. I'm talking about the most convoluted, tortured, inept humour possible; comedy that is unreacted to, even by the few people actually paying attention to it; comedy that initially leaves you stone-faced, but later ends up leading you into an existentialist frame of mind, where you realise its meaningless nature is simply a microcosm for the meaningless nature of life its-bloody-self.

My nomination for this dubious honour: Jokes For Minecrafters

doppelkorn

I think a few have mentioned it on here, but Fred Bassett is anti-humour in the sense that it invokes a reaction that is precisely the opposite to being slightly amused.

kalowski

Quote from: doppelkorn on July 08, 2017, 01:53:50 PM
I think a few have mentioned it on here, but Fred Bassett is anti-humour in the sense that it invokes a reaction that is precisely the opposite to being slightly amused.
From the Not the Nine O'clock News book



Glebe

I have a weird kind of nostalgia for Fred Bassett, but yes, there's no denying he's the least-funny cartoon character in world history.

Spoon of Ploff

As a child I wrote to Alex Graham saying Fred Bassett should be made into a cartoon.



I'm so sorry.

newbridge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvU2CdzPQf8

Ad agency exec: "Ted, are you sitting down? I've got an idea..."

Gurke and Hare

The Perishers is worse than Fred Basset.


up_the_hampipe

Quote from: Steven on July 08, 2017, 04:22:43 PM
"No roaming charges? Wheeey..."

*shudders*

You could probably link every "funny" advert ever and it would qualify for this thread.


Phil_A

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on July 08, 2017, 04:44:11 PM
You could probably link every "funny" advert ever and it would qualify for this thread.

Yes. Advertising is a field where comedy goes to die.

Remember "Halifax FM"? This ad only lasts a minute, feels like a lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3veZJjvhzM

I think Orange cinema ads epitomise this, the kind of thing you'd smirk at once or twice, but if you had to sit though them in front of multiple films, resentment gradually developed into a bitter, burning hatred. Astonishingly, when the ads switched to EE they got even worse.

This fucking bollocks is what I'm talking about. All the effort put into this for such a shit "joke".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHRd-ctw1Jk

BeardFaceMan

My text file of 500 jokes that even Tim Vine would say 'fuck off' to.

madhair60


JLC's stand up


But I don't think there's a way out of these things, like the comic, being a bit funny in reverse, if you contemplate them long enough.

BurkzPeirage


Tikwid

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on July 08, 2017, 06:07:05 PM
JLC's stand up


But I don't think there's a way out of these things, like the comic, being a bit funny in reverse, if you contemplate them long enough.
I actually dreamt of this man a few months back - he was in Cabots Circus shopping centre at the top of an escalator getting ready to jump off, and it was a full hour (of compressed dream time) before he leapt, his body splattering all over the pavement in grisly slow motion. Which was interesting because a) I honestly had no idea he was from Bristol at the time, and b) it might have been a subconscious metaphor for his entire comedic career?

Alternately, as Wikipedia so bitingly phrases it:

hard rocx and mettals

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on July 08, 2017, 04:48:55 PM


this featured on a recent big Twitter thread of 'the worst mid-2000s videogame webcomics you can find', which includes plenty of other execrable examples:

https://twitter.com/abigbagofkeys/status/879398284384587776

doppelkorn

I don't understand that Jesus one at all, but the more annoying part is the mixing American and British phrasing.

neveragain

I've been watching some of the midday repeats on Challenge recently and some of the gags that Brucie et al are forced to spew out are really convoluted. Take this oddly-worded example from Play Your Cards Right, which involved one of Brucie's dollies (who do their dealing) -

Bruce: Golf can be dangerous. I was once playing a round and clonk I got hit in the head with a golf ball.
Lady: Oh dear!
Bruce: But at least I got to fulfil one of my dad's ambitions.
Lady: Oh, did he always want you to become a golfer?
Bruce: No, but I went to the doctor. He was always saying I should get my head examined.

Just... weak. I mean, it may look better written down but it really didn't deserve the amount of time it took them to mug through it. To start with, 'I got to fulfil one of my dad's ambitions' doesn't come out sounding natural at all, let alone the follow-up question which suggests every father wants their son to be a golfer. Note not a professional golfer, merely one that golfs. Can't quite remember where the 'went to the doctor' came in but I'm sure it was at the least comedically viable moment.

There was also a lovely laughter-free moment on Family Fortunes when Les Dennis, to someone who worked in a lightbulb factory, asked:
'How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? One.. (Turns to audience, over-egging) but the lightbulb has to want to change.'
Of all the lightbulb jokes to choose, why that one? It's also worth saying Dennis' impressions are dire. I had always heard he was good.

a peepee tipi

Quote from: hard rocx and mettals on July 08, 2017, 08:15:26 PM
this featured on a recent big Twitter thread of 'the worst mid-2000s videogame webcomics you can find', which includes plenty of other execrable examples:

https://twitter.com/abigbagofkeys/status/879398284384587776

Oh my good god

armful

Quote from: Phil_A on July 08, 2017, 05:11:31 PM
Yes. Advertising is a field where comedy goes to die.

Remember "Halifax FM"? This ad only lasts a minute, feels like a lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3veZJjvhzM

I think Orange cinema ads epitomise this, the kind of thing you'd smirk at once or twice, but if you had to sit though them in front of multiple films, resentment gradually developed into a bitter, burning hatred. Astonishingly, when the ads switched to EE they got even worse.

This fucking bollocks is what I'm talking about. All the effort put into this for such a shit "joke".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHRd-ctw1Jk



I dont know. I liked the Rik Mayall beer adverts .

I also recall a gravy advert in which an old Age pensioner tells her equally old husband she was pregnant to get her share of the gravey. I'm having a chuckle just thinking about it


Gwen Taylor on ITV

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on July 08, 2017, 04:48:55 PM


I don't understand this one.  What is the joke meant to be/what is the reference?

Andy147

No reference. The "Chef Brian" comics were used as lolrandom filler when Tim Buckley ran out of ideas/got drunk/wanted to mark the end of a long storyline.

zomgmouse

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on July 08, 2017, 04:44:11 PM
You could probably link every "funny" advert ever and it would qualify for this thread.

Especially if it's companies attempting to appeal to the "youth" market. Or worse, politicians attempting to appeal to the "youth" market. Execrable, the lot of it.


smudge1971

Quote from: madhair60 on July 08, 2017, 05:56:09 PM
This is actually painful to read.
Aye, Tim Buckley certainly went downhill after Starsailor/death.

Quote from: zomgmouse on July 09, 2017, 02:14:53 AM
Especially if it's companies attempting to appeal to the "youth" market. Or worse, politicians attempting to appeal to the "youth" market. Execrable, the lot of it.

Does anyone recall how, in the 1987 election campaign, the SDP/Liberal Alliance did a broadcast with David Owen as Max Headroom?

Mark Steels Stockbroker

Quote from: Glebe on July 08, 2017, 02:03:39 PM
I have a weird kind of nostalgia for Fred Bassett, but yes, there's no denying he's the least-funny cartoon character in world history.


Apart from the time In One Ear did their "What The Papers Say" segment (the joke being they were a live show, so couldn't say anything specific)

Quote from: Radio 4, before most of you were bornClive Mantle: There's this thing in the Mail about a talking dog.
Nick Wilton: Oh really?
Clive Mantle: Yeah, it's called "Fred Bassett".

Mark Steels Stockbroker

Mike Huckabee has established himself on Twitter as the most reliably incompetent celebrity joke-teller.

Serge

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on July 08, 2017, 04:13:06 PM
The Perishers is worse than Fred Basset.

Noooo! The Perishers - in its Dennis Collins-drawn heyday - was fantastic. It went downhill after Collins' retirement, largely as Maurice Dodd and Bill Mevin just couldn't draw the strip as well as he did, but for nearly 25 years, it was excellent.