The Funniest Joke of the Fringe award, now in its 14th year, is presented annually to a quip or one-liner deemed most hilarious by a panel of judges and a public vote. This year’s winner was comedian Lorna Rose Treen, who captured 44 per cent of the vote with this gem:
“I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.”
Look, I can’t think of anything meaner than making fun of somebody for making a bad joke, but I’m going to grit my teeth and try my best.
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I’m not the first person to point this out – Twitter/X has been especially unkind to this year’s winner – but the joke barely makes sense. Cheetahs and zookeepers aren’t synonymous, they’re just two things that are occasionally in close proximity to one another. A better version of the joke might be something like “Why did the tiger lose at poker? Because he was playing with a cheetah”.
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To be fair to Treen, it’s not just her. Of the top 10 jokes that were shortlisted for the award, only one of them even really registers as a proper joke. William Stone’s “Nationwide must have looked pretty silly when they opened their first branch” is pretty clever, and has that sort of cool Mitch Hedberg quality that helps it rise above the others, which are essentially just a collection of lazy puns and twee observations. This one by Daniel Foxx is especially egregious: “My grandma describes herself as being in her ‘twilight years’ which I love because they’re great films”. That isn’t even a pun! That’s just word association!
I just think dad jokes are coming back in fashion with younger people now. There are podcasts that have whole sections based around dad jokes. Maybe the zoomers are finding unironically funny, maybe we do just need some simple lighthearted fun.
I’m not going to be lion, I’m all here for it, and I won’t be changing my spots.
The joke of the fringe is never really great in my opinion, but I’m not a massive one liner fan. Also it’s not representative of the fringe as literally every kind of comedy is there, a lot of which is great (got back from there recently).
It’s nice to see a female comic win but it’s not my favourite one liner (sounds like something you’d get in a cracker
Some of the top ten look fairly limp/low effort when written down, but the comedians delivery must really add so much. Oh and once your pun hits this list basically everyone will hear about it but forget your name, so if you tell it again they think you’re stealing :/
but the comedians delivery must really add so much.
I believe, it’s the way ya tell 'em.
