• Finding a universally funny joke is challenging.
• Effective jokes are a "benign violation" always walking a delicate balancing act between too soft and too extreme.
• The purpose of a benign violation is to elicit laughter and disgust at the same time.
• Jokes in the times of all-powerful medieval monarchs were a risky business.
• Many of the oldest written jokes were scribbled in the margins of ornate early Latin Bibles.
• Raw intelligence is the most effective indicator of whether someone is funny.

Stand-up comedy in recent years has evolved at speed. Kylie Brakeman was one of the early adopters of a new kind of observational comedy that emerged at the start of the pandemic. Her to-camera Twitter videos have attracted millions of views and kicked off an era in which the day's events can be ...