Here are 130 clean* jokes in easy English. I hope you enjoy them!

*Clean jokes: As we all know, English teachers are very nice people who NEVER tell jokes about other people's nationality, age, gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, body parts, bodily functions, attractiveness, hair colour, baldness, intelligence, literacy, sanity, disabilities, skill level, accent, social class, religion, poverty, height, weight or fashion sense. So that's it for about 60% of jokes in the English language.

Also, a joke isn't funny if you have to explain it. If English isn't your first language, that's it for most of the other 40%! ("Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder"? "Nothing succeeds like a parrot"? "He's got an edifice complex"? "It's that sick squid I owe you"?)

1) Jokes for children

• Q. Where would you find a tortoise with no legs?
  A. Where you left it.
• Q. What's green, has four legs and if it fell on you from a tree, it would kill you?
  A. A snooker table.
• Q. What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?
  A. A stick.
• Q. What's brown and sticky?
  A. A stick.
• Q. What do you call a fish with no eyes?
  A. A fsh.

• Q. What do you call a deer with no eyes?
  A. No idea.
• Q. What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?
  A. Still no idea.
• Q. What do you call an ant with a machine gun?
  A. Anything he wants you to.
• Q. What do you call a mushroom that loves to go to nightclubs and parties?
  A. A fungi.
• Q. What's orange, and sounds like a parrot?
  A. A carrot.
• A penguin walks into a hotel. He goes to reception and says “Excuse me, has my wife arrived yet?”
  and the receptionist says “I don’t know, sir, what does she look like?”
• Q. What did the mouse say the first time it saw a bat?
  A. Look, mum, an angel!
• A man goes into a book shop and says to an assistant “Excuse me, do you have a book by Shakespeare?”
  The assistant says “Certainly, sir, which one?” and the man replies “William, of course.”
• Q. What’s green and smells like red paint?
  A. Green paint.

• Q. What's yellow and dangerous?
  A. Shark-infested custard.
• Q. Why do elephants paint the bottoms of their feet yellow?
  A. So you can’t see them when they’re hiding upside-down in bowls of custard.
• Have you ever seen an elephant in a bowl of custard?
  No.
  See? It works.
• Q. Why do elephants paint their toenails red?
  A. So you can’t see them when they’re hiding in cherry trees.
• Q. What lies on the ground, 100 feet up in the air?
  A. A dead centipede.
• Q. What goes tap ...tap ...tap ninety-nine times and then thump?
  A. A centipede with a wooden leg.

2) "...walks into a bar" jokes

• A bear walks into a bar, and says "A tomato juice with ......................... er ................... with ice, please."
  The barman says, "Why the big pause?" and the bear says, "I don't know, I've always had them".*
• A gorilla walks into a bar and points at one of the beer pumps. The barman pours him a beer and says, "That'll be £6.50 please", and then he adds "You know, we don't get many gorillas in here". The gorilla says "With prices like that, I'm not surprised."
• A horse walks into a bar. The barman says "Why the long face?"**

* Big pause, big paws.
** To have a long face is to look sad.

 

3) More animal jokes

• There are two monkeys in a bath. One says "Eee eee aaa aaa ooo ook".
  The other one says "Well, don't sit so close to the hot tap, then."
• A motorcycle policeman stops a car, and finds six penguins in the boot. He says to the driver, "I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to take these penguins to the zoo." Next day he stops the same car, and again finds six penguins. They're now wearing sunglasses. He says to the driver, "I thought I told you to take them to the zoo." The driver says, "I did, thanks, we had a great time! Today we're going to the beach."
• Two campers are going back to their tent in the forest when they see a bear. It sees them, and starts running towards them, grunting. One of the campers takes a pair of running shoes out of his rucksack, sits down and starts putting them on. "What are you doing?" says his friend, "Bears are really fast! You can't outrun a bear!" The other man says "I don't have to, I just have to outrun you."
• A woman is sitting in a cinema [movie theater in USA]. The film is about to start. She looks at the next seat, and is surprised to see a squirrel.
  She says "Hey, little squirrel, what are you doing in here?"
  The squirrel says, "I liked the book. And I'm actually quite tall for a squirrel."
• A man is standing in his garden one night, and he sees a snail on the lawn. He picks it up and throws it as far as he can. Three years later, he hears a knock on the door. He opens the door, and there's the snail. It says, "What did you do that for?"
• Two lions are walking along an aisle in a supermarket. One says, "Quiet in here, isn't it".
• One day in the Arctic, a baby polar bear says to his mother, “Mum, what kind of bear am I?”
  She replies “You’re a polar bear, dear, and a very fine one”.
  About five minutes later he asks, “Could I be a brown bear?”
  She answers, “No, dear, you’re a polar bear. Brown bears are much smaller than polar bears. And they're brown”.
  After another ten minutes he says, “Mum, do you think I could be a grizzly bear?”.
  His mother says, “No, grizzly bears are brown too. You’re definitely a polar bear”.
  Five minutes later he says, "Mum, could I be a panda?"
  His mother says, "No, don't be silly! Pandas live in China and eat bamboo."
  After another couple of minutes he says, “Mum, you don’t think I could be a koala bear, do you?”
  She says, “No!!! Koala bears are tiny!! They live in trees! You’re white, you’re a polar bear! Why do you keep asking?”
  The baby says, “If I’m a polar bear, why am I freezing cold all the time??”

 

4) "...change a lightbulb" jokes

• Q. How many philosophers does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. How do you define “lightbulb”?
• Q. How many pessimists does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. None. It’s hopeless. We will never find a new lightbulb the right size.
• Q. How many people from the government does it take to change a light bulb?
  A. Three. One tells the public that the government is doing everything possible, while the other two try to screw the bulb into the water tap.
• Q. How many men from the Teamsters [trade union] does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. Six. Have you got a problem with that, pal?
• Q. How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. Change your own damn lightbulb. And how did you get my email address?
• Q. How many supermodels does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. One. She holds the lightbulb, and the universe revolves around her.
• Q. How many Surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
  Two. One to hold the banana, and another to fill the bath with pink tortoises.
• Q. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. Only one, but the lightbulb must really, really want to change.

 

5) Doctor and patient jokes

• A man goes to see his doctor. He says, “Doctor, I hurt all over.”
  He touches himself on the arm and goes “Ouch, I hurt here”, and on the leg, “Ow, and I hurt here”, and touches his hair and says “I even hurt here”.
  The doctor says, "I think I know what your problem is."
  The man says, "Yes?"
  “You’ve got a broken finger.”
• A man's in hospital with both his hands covered in bandages. The doctor comes round to see him and says, "We'll soon have those bandages off." The man says, "Tell me, doctor, when the bandages come off, do you think I'll be able to play the piano?" and the doctor replies, "Certainly you will." The man says, "That's amazing, I could never play it before."
• A woman goes to see a psychiatrist, and says "Doctor, it's about my husband. He thinks he's a chicken."
  The psychiatrist says, "How long has this been going on?"
  The woman replies, "About a year now" and the psychiatrist says, "Why on earth did you leave it so long?"
  She said, "I know I should have come to see you sooner, but he seemed quite happy. And we needed the eggs."
• "Doctor, doctor, I keep on forgetting things."
  "How long has this been happening?"
  "How long has what been happening?"
• My doctor said I was paranoid. Well, he didn't actually say it, but I could tell he was thinking it.
• A man calls his family doctor for an appointment. The receptionist says “We have some free appointments in two weeks.”
  The man says “That’s no good, I could be dead by then.”
  The receptionist says, “No problem; if your wife lets us know, we can cancel the appointment.”

 

6) Happy families jokes

• I'm single by choice. But not my choice.
• I never knew what real happiness was until I got married; and then it was too late.
• My wife has been lying to me. She said she was going to leave me, but when I came home from work, she was still there.
• I've been married to my wife for twenty years, and I would never have an affair with another woman. I love my house too much.
• "Did you really only marry your wife because her father left her a lot of money?"
  "No, not at all, I'd have married her whoever gave her the money."
• A man pulls a large box up to the front door of a house. He rings the doorbell and a woman answers.
  He says, "Are you the widow Jones?" She says, "No, I'm Mrs Jones, not the widow Jones."
  He says, "Hold on a moment, you haven't seen what's in this box yet."
• A woman is telling a friend that she's just about to get married for the fourth time, because all her previous husbands died.
  "How awful. What happened to your first husband?"
  "He ate some poisonous mushrooms and died."
  "What happened to your second husband?"
  "He ate some poisonous mushrooms and died, too."
  "That's terribly unlucky. What happened to your third husband?"
  "He died of a broken neck."
  "How did that happen?"
  "He didn't want to eat the mushrooms."
  
• A woman wins the National Lottery, and she says to her husband, "Hey, I won the lottery, I'm going to the bank, start packing!"
  He says "Am I packing to go to the seaside or the mountains?"
  She says "How would I know? Just make sure you're not here by the time I get back."
• A man says to his wife, "I'm going to the pub. Put your coat on."
  She says, "Oh, that's nice, are you taking me out for a drink?"
  He says "No, I'm turning off the central heating."
• A man goes on holiday to Africa with his wife and her mother. A lion jumps out from behind a tree and roars at the mother-in-law. The wife says, "Aren't you going to do something?" and the man says, "No, the lion got himself into this mess, he can get himself out again."
  (Thank you to the late, great Les Dawson.)
• "I saw six men kicking and punching my mother-in-law. My neighbour said 'Are you going to help?' I said 'No, six should be enough."
  (Les Dawson again.)
• "My mother-in law has the things most men desire - muscles and a moustache."
  (Yes, Les Dawson.)
• A Boy Scout went round to my mother-in-law's house the other day and said the Scouts were collecting glass for charity.
  He asked, "Do you have any empty beer or whisky bottles?" She was horrified.
  She said, "Do I look like the sort of person who drinks alcohol?"
  The Scout said, "No, I suppose not. Sorry. So, do you have any empty vinegar bottles?"
• And on a more positive note, the crime writer Agatha Christie was happily married to an archaeologist, and she said, “An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”

 

7) Waiter, waiter! jokes

• "Waiter, you've got your thumb in my soup!"
  "Don't worry, sir, it isn't hot."
• "Waiter, why have you got your thumb on my steak?"
  "I didn't want it to fall on the floor again."
• "Waiter, waiter! What's this fly doing in my soup?"
  "It looks like the front crawl to me, sir."
• "Waiter, waiter! There's a small slug* in my salad!"
  "Would you like me to get you a larger one, sir?"
• "Waiter, waiter! I don't see any soup on the menu today?"
  "Quite right, sir, we cleaned them all yesterday."
• "Waiter, waiter! This chicken has only got one leg!"
  "Perhaps it's been in a fight, sir."
  "In that case, bring me the winner."

[*slug: A mollusc, like a snail with no shell]

 

8) Transport jokes

• I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming with terror like his passengers.
• Nervous airline passenger: "Tell me, do these planes crash often?"
  Flight attendant: "No, sir, only once."
• It's night time and two nuns are driving through Transylvania. Suddenly a vampire jumps onto the car. The driver says to her friend, "Quick, sister, show him your cross!"* The other nun leans out of the window and shouts, "Hey, Dracula, get off the damn car, you bat-brained fashion disaster!"
• A man is visiting Dartmoor for the first time, and he is amazed by the country roads, which are very narrow, with a lot of sharp bends. They have solid rock walls on each side, with a tall, thick hedge on top. He drives his hire car very slowly round a corner, just as a woman comes round in the other direction in a huge open Rolls Royce. She's driving very fast, and he only just manages to stop in time. As she goes past him she leans over the side of the Rolls Royce and shouts "Pig!" at him. He is furious, turns round and shouts "Cow!" at her. Two seconds later he crashes into the biggest pig he's ever seen.
• A man is visiting the west coast of Scotland for the first time. There are no other cars around, and he's having a great time driving really fast around the narrow country roads. Suddenly he sees a police officer, who waves him to stop. He stops at the side of the road and opens his window. The police officer walks up to the car and says, "You're not from around here, are you, sir." The man says, "No, why?" and the police officer says, "You're driving too fast for the weather conditions here in Scotland. What are you going to do if you go round a corner and suddenly run into Mister Fog?"
  The driver says sarcastically, "If I run into Mister Fog, I'll take my foot off Mister Accelerator and put it on Mister Brake." The police officer looks at him in total silence for about 5 seconds, and then says, "No, sir, what I actually said was 'What are you going to do if you run into mist or fog?'"

*Show him your cross (...your crucifix); show him you're cross (...you're angry)



And for petrolheads (a petrolhead is a person who loves cars and motorcycles):

• There are three men talking about their 4WD (four-wheel-drive) cars. It seems the latest 4WDs are so air-tight that if all the doors and windows except one are shut, you have to pull hard to shut the last door. In fact, if you shut all the doors and windows, you can drive the car into a river and no water gets in. They decide to do an experiment. Each man will put a cat in his car and leave it there all night, with all the windows and ventilators closed. One of them has a Porsche Cayenne, the second has a Mitsubishi Shogun, and the third has a ten year old Land Rover Defender. The next weekend they meet up again. The man with the Cayenne says "The cat was dead the next morning." The second man says "Yeah? My cat was fine." They third man says "I couldn't find the cat."
  [Proper 1948-2016 Land Rover Defenders are famous for being noisy, bumpy and drafty; the cat found a hole and got out.]
• Motorcyclist's T-shirt: "Earth Sky Earth Sky Earth Sky Earth Sky Earth Sky Earth Sky Ambulance."

 

9) Not vegetarian jokes

• A man goes into a restaurant and asks "How do you prepare the chicken?"
  The waiter says "We don't, we just tell it straight out that it's going to die."
• A man walks past a farm, and sees a pig with a wooden leg. He asks the farmer how it lost its leg. "Well, one night last year we were all asleep and the farmhouse caught fire. This pig was outside in the yard when it saw there was a problem. It broke into the house, went upstairs, and it dragged me out of the smoke. Then it left me in the yard and went back into the house and got my wife and dragged her out. And then it went back in twice more and rescued our children."
  The man said "And I suppose the pig got its leg badly burned in the fire?"
  The farmer said "No, sir, but when you have a pig like this, you don't eat it all at once."
• A man buys a parrot, and he takes it home, but it starts saying terrible things in a loud voice. He puts a cloth over its cage, but that doesn't stop it. He takes off the cloth and throws a cup of water over it, but it says worse things and gets even louder.
  The man's neighbours start banging on the wall, so he takes the parrot out of the house and puts it in the garden shed, but he can still hear it. In desperation, he takes it back into the house and puts it in the refrigerator.
  The parrot immediately stops making any noise, so after a few minutes the man gets it out of the refrigerator and puts it back in its cage.
  The parrot says, "I'm terribly sorry, I don't know what came over me" and the man says "That's OK, as long as you don't do it again."
  The parrot says "I certainly won't. No, no, absolutely not. Can I just ask, what did the chicken do?"

 

10) Foreign language jokes

• Q. There was an English cat called “One Two Three”, and a French cat called “Trois Quatre Cinq.”
  They decided to have a swimming race across the English Channel. Which cat won?
  A. The English cat. Trois cat sank.
• Q. According to Sigmund Freud, what comes between fear and sex?
  A. Fünf.*

  *Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun...

 

11) Work jokes

• Pay peanuts; get monkeys.
• I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.
• Tell your boss what you really think of him. The truth will make you free.
• "I've got a friend who's a lion tamer. He used to be a school teacher until he lost his nerve."
  (Les Dawson again).
• My boss called me into his office the other day, and he said, "You can't come to work in pyjamas".
  I said, "I don't see why not. Everybody else does."
  And he said, "That's because they're patients."
• A heart attack: Nature's way of telling you to slow down.

 

12) Lawyer jokes

I was a lawyer for 20 years, so I'm allowed to tell lawyer jokes.


• A cruise ship sinks in a tropical lagoon. Pretty soon, there are sharks everywhere. The crew and the passengers are terrified, but one of the passengers says, "It's OK, I'll go and get help". He jumps into the water and two enormous sharks go straight towards him. Then they stop and turn around. Everybody watches, astonished, as the sharks carry him to the beach. They all meet later at a beach bar. "How did you know the sharks were going to do that?" somebody asked. "Oh, it was just normal professional courtesy. I'm a lawyer".
• A lawyer and a doctor are driving their cars along a country road. They're both going a bit too fast, there's an accident and both cars are damaged. The lawyer helps the doctor out of his car and asks if he's OK. The doctor's never had a road accident before, and he's quite shaken. The lawyer says, "Hey, it's nothing major, nobody got hurt. Sit down, get your breath back, I've got some whisky here, have a drink, relax." They sit there for a few minutes, then the lawyer offers the doctor some more whisky.
  The doctor says, "You're very kind. Don't you want a drink yourself?"
  The lawyer says, "It's OK, I'll have something after the police leave."
• A young couple is killed in a road accident, and they both go up to Heaven. When they get there, they say to St Peter, "We were going to get married the day after the accident. Can we get married here in Heaven?"
  St Peter says, "OK, but you'll have to wait until we get a priest here who can marry you."
  Five years go by, and the couple say to St Peter, "Don't you have any priests yet?" and he says, "No, be patient".
  After another five years, St Peter goes to them and says, "We've got a priest now!" They're very happy and they get married at once.
  Unfortunately, after a few years, the marriage has problems and they want to get divorced. They go to St Peter again. "Now you want a divorce? For a divorce, you need a lawyer. It took us 10 years to get a priest. Do you have any idea how long it'll take before we get a lawyer?"

 

13) Economist jokes

• Q. Why did they invent economics?
  A. To make astrology look respectable.
• An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday did not happen today.
• Economics is a great way to provide employment. For economists.
• An economist goes for a job interview. The interviewer says, "What's 2 plus 2?"
  The economist stands up and walks over to the door. He opens the door, looks outside, comes back in again, locks the door, sits down, looks at the interviewer and says "It's anything you want it to be."
  The interviewer says, "Congratulations; can you start on Monday?"
• Q. How many economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
  A. None. When a resource is depleted, the market will provide a solution.
• An economist walks up to a shepherd who is out in the field, checking his sheep. He says, "I can tell you how many sheep you've got." The shepherd says, "If you can do that, you can have one." The economist takes out a pocket calculator and starts pressing keys. In a minute, he says "You have 1,029 sheep." The shepherd is astonished. He says, "OK, you win the bet, go and get your sheep". The economist walks over and picks up an animal. The shepherd says, "You know, I bet I can guess what you do for a living." The economist says, "If you can, I'll give you this sheep back." The shepherd says, "You're an economist." The economist is absolutely amazed, and says, "How on earth did you know that?" The shepherd says, "Put down my dog, and I'll tell you."
• "Economists are fascinated by the fact that pencils are produced despite the fact that no one knows how to produce them and despite the fact that no one is charged with coordinating all these people and materials into the production of pencils".
  (Um ... that's not a joke; it's an extract from Microeconomics: An Intuitive Approach by Thomas J Nechyba of Duke University, published by Cengage Learning)
• "Macroeconomics ... has succeeded. Its central problem of depression-prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades."
  (Um ... that's not a joke either; that was "Chicago School" economist Professor Robert E Lucas in his Presidential address to the American Economic Association. The thing that makes it funny, in a not-very-funny sort of way, is that he said it in 2003 ... just before the global depression or "Great Recession" that started with the breakdown of the interbank market in 2007. Oops.)

That's right - economists! People with a strange, quasi-religious belief that humans will always triumph. Encouraging politicians and business to destroy a planet near you! And we only have one planet...

 

14) Political jokes

• 2018 joke: I believe that Donald Trump can make the USA what it once was. An Arctic region covered in ice.
• It’s 1960. Ivan dies, and goes down to Hell. When he arrives, there’s a devil standing at the front entrance who asks him, “Do you want to go into the capitalist Hell or the communist Hell?” While Ivan is thinking, he sees his friend Sergei standing inside the communist Hell. Sergei shouts “Hey, Ivan! Come into this one! In the capitalist Hell they’ll throw you into a big metal bowl full of hot tar where you’ll burn forever!” Ivan says, “So how is the communist Hell different?” and Sergei replies, “The arrangement is the same, but they either run out of tar or they run out of fuel, or if there is fuel and tar, the devils stop work for a union meeting.”
• “There’s a new competition for the best political joke.”
  “Really? What’s the first prize?”
  “10 years.”
• The difference between capitalism and communism is that under communism you have people exploiting people, whereas under capitalism it's the other way around.
• “What do I think of western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.”
  Mahatma Gandhi.

 

15) Science jokes

• WARNING: This product contains very small electrically-charged particles moving at speeds in excess of 13,000,000 miles per hour.
• WARNING: This product attracts every other piece of matter in the Universe, including the products of other manufacturers, with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
• They've just found the gene for shyness. They would have found it earlier, but it was hiding behind two other genes.
• If you drop a cat, it always lands on its feet. If you drop a piece of bread, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. If you drop a cat with buttered bread attached to its feet, the assembly will hover a few centimetres above the ground. With a Giant Buttered Cat Array, you can easily make low-energy public transport systems.

 

16) The miscellaneous...

• "They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now!"
  Bob Monkhouse (a comedian ... more or less)
• "These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."
  Groucho Marx
• "I say, I say, I say, what is the essence of comedy?"
  "Well, I..."
  "Timing! Timing is the essence of comedy."
• Q. "What do Ivan the Terrible and Winnie the Pooh have in common?"
  A. "The same middle name".
• Q. "What do you do if the world's about to end?"
  A. "Go to New Zealand. Everything happens 25 years later there."
• A man goes into the museum in Stratford-Upon-Avon. In one of the display cases, he sees a human skull, and he asks a museum guide what the story is. The guide says, "It's the skull of the great William Shakespeare."
  The man looks at it and says, "It's a bit small, isn't it?"
  The guide says, "It's his skull when he was a boy."
• A man goes into a library and says to the librarian, "A portion of fish and chips, please."
  The librarian says, "This is a library!"
  The man says, very quietly, "Oh, sorry. A portion of fish and chips, please."
• A man is being interviewed. "When is your birthday?", asks the interviewer.
  "The sixth of June," says the man. "Which year?" asks the interviewer. "Every year," says the man.
• The loaf of bread: A huge man with a shaved head and enormous arms covered with tattoos walks into a bakery. He says to the boy behind the counter, "Give me half a loaf." The boy says, "I'm sorry, we only sell whole loaves." The man says "Half a loaf. Now." The boy says, "I'll just go and ask the baker". He goes into the back of the shop and says to the baker, "This great ugly monster of a man just came in and asked to buy half a loaf." He turns round and sees the man standing just behind him. The boy says, "And then this gentleman came in and asked to buy the other half."
• A woman with a baby gets onto a bus. The bus driver says, "That's the ugliest baby I've ever seen." The woman is very upset, but she goes and sits down, and says to her neighbour, "The bus driver just insulted me!" Her neighbour says, "Well, that's not right, is it. You go up and tell him off, love. Go on, I'll hold your monkey for you."
• It’s night, and a criminal breaks into a house. He’s walking around in the dark when a voice says “Jesus is watching you”.
  The criminal panics for a moment, but then he sees it’s only a parrot.
  He says to the parrot, “What’s your name?” and it says “Abraham”.
  The criminal says, “What sort of person calls their parrot Abraham?”
  The parrot replies, “The same sort of person that calls his Rottweiler 'Jesus'”.
• Michelangelo gives each of his apprentices a block of stone and a hammer and chisel, and tells each of them to make a statue of a horse. The top apprentice says, "Maestro, is there any advice you can give us?"
  Michelangelo thinks for a while, and then says, "Have a good look at the block, pick up your hammer and the chisel, and remove all the stone that is not a horse."
  He goes back two hours later, and Alessandro has a pile of little pieces of stone in front of him. Michelangelo says, "Alessandro, what happened to your block?" "I don't think there was a horse in mine."
• A computer lets you make a mistake faster than any invention in history, with the possible exception of handguns and Tequila.
• "'Smile', they said, 'things could be worse'. So I did smile, and things did get worse."
• The ambulance service gets a telephone call from a man in a panic. "You've got to help me!" he says, "I'm out here in the forest with my friend, we're hunting deer, and I think he's had a heart attack! I think he's dead!" The ambulance service operator says, "OK, keep calm. First, let's make sure he's dead." There's a silence, then a gunshot, then the man comes back to the phone and says, "OK, what do I do next?"

 

17) ...and the weird

• I saw a man in a cafe the other day. He was sitting there with a coffee in front of him. No mobile phone, no laptop, no MP3 player. He wasn't texting or listening to music or anything, he was just sitting there. With a coffee. Like a psychopath.
• I went to a restaurant that serves “Breakfast at Any Time”. So I ordered a bacon sandwich during the Renaissance.
• I love children. But I couldn't eat a whole one.
• People often say to me, "Hey, what are you doing in my garden?"
• John goes on holiday to Spain; John's cat stays with his brother David.
  When John comes back, David says, "Hi John. Your cat's dead".
  John says, "Tiger? Tiger's dead? But that's terrible! That's awful! And why didn't you break the news gently?
  "What do you mean, break the news gently?"
  "You could have said 'I'm very sorry, but I have bad news. Tiger went up onto the roof, and I called him, but he didn't come back, so I called the Fire Brigade, but before they arrived he fell off the roof and was killed.'"
  "OK, sorry."
  "Oh, that's alright, I'm sure it wasn't your fault. Anyway, how's Mum?"
  David says "Well, Mum went up onto the roof, and I called her, but she didn't come back, so I called the Fire Brigade... "

 

18) Puns & word games

For advanced students of English:

• Did you hear about the man who bought a magic dog? It was a labracadabrador.
• Did you hear about the cat that ate a ball of wool? It had mittens.

• Q. What do you call a cross between a sheep and a kangaroo?
  A. A woolly jumper.
• Q. What do you call a donkey with three legs?
  A. A wonky.
• Q. What do wonkies live in?
  A. Unstables.
• "Waiter, waiter! What's this?"
  "It's bean soup, sir."
  "I don't want to know what it's been, I want to know what it is now."
• "My wife's gone to the West Indies."
  "Jamaica?"
  "No, it was her own idea."

 

19) Jokes for naturalists



You know, it's really hard to find jokes for naturalists. That's because nature is oooh, aaaah, wow, cool, ssshh, hmmm and sometimes eurgh, eeek or even aaargh! but it's not often ho ho ho. Except visually. Still, here are half a dozen jokes you may like:

• "What's red, about 15 centimetres long, has lots of legs and two big fangs?"
  "I don't know."
  "I don't know either, but there's one climbing up your leg."
• Q. What has 18 legs and catches flies?
  A. Two and a quarter spiders.
• "I saw a chameleon today. So I suppose it's safe to say it wasn't a very good chameleon."

• Q. How do you tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel?
  A. A weasel is weasily wecognisable, and a stoat is stotally different.
• Two vultures sitting on a dead tree.
  One says, "Patience, my ass! I'm gonna kill something."
• Q. Why are seabirds always lucky in love?
  A.Because one good tern deserves another.
• "Oh, relax, it can't bite you, they don't have any teeth at that age. Oh. That's quite interesting. You wait there and keep pressure on it, I'll go and get the First Aid kit."
• Q. How do you get down from an elephant?
  A. You don't. You get down from a duck.*

• It's mid-afternoon in a small fishing village, and a fisherman is walking round the harbour carrying two large, live lobsters, one in each hand. It's two weeks after the end of the lobster fishing season. Walking in the other direction is a Fisheries Protection Officer. The officer looks at the lobsters. The lobsters look at him and snap their claws. The officer says: "I've got you this time, Patrick. Carrying two live lobsters, weeks after the end of the fishing season!"
  
  Patrick says "Not at all! I caught these two during the season, and I've been training them."
  The officer says, "Training them? To do what?"
  "I'm training them to retrieve things from the sea. They're already half-trained. Every day I put them in the sea and let them walk around for a few minutes while I have a cigarette. Then I whistle them, they come back up the beach and I take them home."
  "Very likely," says the officer, "Let's try a little test, shall we?"
  
  They go round to the end of the harbour and the officer watches while the fisherman gently puts them into the water. Then he lights his cigarette, and looks out to sea. After a few minutes, the officer says to the fisherman, "What about whistling?"
  The fisherman says, "What for?"
  The officer says, "To call the lobsters back."
  The fisherman says, "What lobsters?"

 



 

*A joke isn't funny if you have to explain it ... but I will, because this page is for people learning English. In the English language, 'down' is a direction - up, down, left, right - and if you're on an elephant, it's difficult to get down, because an elephant is very high.
'Down' is also a very soft, warm kind of feather that you find inside a really good sleeping bag, or inside a traditional bed quilt - an 'eiderdown'. Down comes mainly from water birds, particularly the eider duck (Somarteria mollissima) that lives in Scotland, Iceland, Scandinavia in general, and the Arctic. Which is why 'eiderdown' in English is edderdun in Denmark, eiderdun in Sweden, æðardúnn in Iceland, edredom in Portugal, and édredon in France.
And if you're thinking, "What do you mean, 'eiderdown'? That's a duvet!", well, 'duvet' is the French word for down.