The case for… Dad jokes

Photograph by Shaw + Shaw

Let’s try to pin down the dad joke. They’re often puns. Is that what people don’t like? Or the masculine need to make jokes at all? Is it that the joke is generic? Maybe it is a reflex gag, staled by repetition. Jokes aren’t funny if you say them over and over, are they? Or are they?

In the past, punters packed music halls to hear comedians do their favourite bits, which the comedian hadn’t written. Familiarity was the selling point. The skill of joke-telling is not just originality or quality but speed and rhythm. We groan, because we didn’t have the wherewithal to get to the punchline ourselves. It is the huffing of the loser on the finish line. And as for puns, the fact is they’re punny. I mean funny. Jamaica? No, she went of her own accord!

In fact, we’re left with a disturbing conclusion. Is a dad joke simply any joke told by a dad? We needn’t give more space to the ugly identity politics of this. The dads wouldn’t want that.

Let’s agree dad jokes are essentially affable, radical for not being radical, comforting in our edgy, disrupted world. I don’t have the energy to argue further. My wife’s gone to the Caribbean. I should have said yes to the marriage counselling!