Scientists close in on world's funniest joke

It could be the biggest single experiment of all time: perhaps half a million in the jury, from all over the world, a total of 50,000 offerings and a majority verdict on the funniest joke ever by September 2002.

But on the evidence so far, Laughlab is not likely to match the famous Monty Python sketch which involved a joke so lethal that specially trained British army platoons could only be trusted with a few words each.

Laughlab is the brainchild of a University of Hertfordshire psychologist, Richard Wiseman.

It is an experiment in mass humour which, although it may not end with anyone dying of laughter, could neverthless throw new light on humour, that most mysterious of cultural entities.

Since Laughlab's launch in September - it is designed to last the whole of the government-sponsored Science Year - more than 100,000 people from 70 countries have visited the laughlab.co.uk website, submitted a total of 10,000 jokes and rated them on a specially designed "laughometer".

The provisional finding is that around 47,000 people thought a joke involving Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson and a stolen tent is the funniest story so far.

The nation that topped the laughometer league was Germany - allegedly the people with the least developed sense of humour.

But there was some solace for the discerning. The world's worst rated jokes include one of the oldest. Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: To get to the other side.

From the huge welter of Christmas cracker mottos, bad pub jokes, shaggy dog stories and tortured puns, patterns have begun to emerge.

Before punters visiting the website can rate a joke, they must answer a questionnaire which reveals age, personality and background. There has been confirmation of a sharp divergence, according to Dr Wiseman, in what men and women think of as funny. Women like verbal play, but men prefer aggression and innuendo.

Ten-year-olds also revealed an appetite for basic wordplay (Sample: "Did you hear about the man who drowned in a bowl of muesli? He got pulled under by a very strong currant.")

Another discovery was that people warmed to jokes as they rated them, giving the last higher marks than the first. "Having a warm-up person before you send on your main comedian is a very good idea," Dr Wiseman said.

The questionnaire also established national trends.

"The fact that Germany scored so highly in terms of finding the jokes funny is really rather curious, although maybe there aren't many funny jokes in Germany," Dr Wiseman said.

"Or possibly there may be Germans who have a brilliant sense of humour after all."

World's funniest joke (so far), submitted by Geoff Anandappa, from Blackpool

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are going camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up: "Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce."

Watson: "I see millions of stars and even if a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life."

Holmes: "Watson, you idiot, somebody's stolen our tent!"

Close second (provisional):

A couple of hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing. The other whips out his mobile phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps out to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?"

The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: "Just take it easy. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?"

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