Germany voted world’s least funny country

As the old saying goes, it wouldn't be a stereotype unless it had some truth and true to form, Germany have been voted the world's least funny country.

Surprisingly, despite their heritage in classic TV comedies, Britain were voted fourth-least funny in the poll, which surveyed over 30,000 people in 15 countries for social networking and dating site Badoo.com.

‘Germans are brilliant at so many things, including making cars and beating us at football” said Badoo spokesman Lloyd Price.

'Unfortunately, telling jokes isn’t always one of them. If only there was a comedy World Cup, we might stand a chance against them.’

Unsurprisingly, the US topped the poll for funniest nation, though it should be noted that the country that gave us Seinfeld, Arrested Development, Anchorman and Zoolander also gave us three Big Momma’s House movies and the continuing career of Kevin James.

One of the reasons Germany is always the butt of the world’s jokes is that German sentences cannot be reordered to delay a punchline, which is the typical joke-telling pattern of English-language jokes. In 2007, Spiegel magazine correctly observed that the world's image of the typical German was as the “mercilessly efficient but humourless engineer”.

Just to offer a little balance, here is an example of a German ‘joke’. We’ve included the original German version too, so perhaps it may be funnier in its native tongue:

Ein mann und seine frau stehen morgens auf.
Die frau geht zum fenster, guckt raus, und sagt zu ihrem mann, "guck mal liebling, es graut der morgen."
Der mann erwidert, "nein schatz, es graut dem morgen."

A man and a woman are getting up one morning.
The woman goes to the window, looks out, and says to her husband, "look sweetie, the sun's rising."
The man replies, "no darling, the morning is horrified."

.....We don’t get it.