Hi There,
Give me British comedy any time (except Benny Hill), I grew up with the Goons on radio, as a small child, and Spike Milligans books on his WW2 days are full of poignant humour., not to mention his other books.
Puckoon was his funniest, and when driving through Melbourne in the '70's I spied a small Theatre which was advertising the play "Puckoon".
So, I wrote to my Parents who dwelt in NSW at the time and lived near Spikes' Mother, I wrote to her to obtain Spikes address in UK, she passed in on, I wrote to him about "Puckoon" as a play. He replied instantly, saying that it isn't in play script form, but good luck if you can do it. Signed Spike. I still treasure that letter today.I found out that the Theatre advertising the Play, had actually scripted the play themselves.
NSB

stevenlmeyer,

I have a T-Shirt of Che wearing a Che T-shirt.

Humour is subjective. Who would have thought. I must admit every time I hear the term 'Family Values' I chuckle. One could spend all day using sporting and political cliche's and slogans.

Some people are funny even before they open their mouth. Like John Doyle aka Roy Slaven, and John Clarke. Jimoein and Micallef can be a bit like that too.

And Charles Manson of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2oZWpqtNi4&feature=related

It also depends on mood. 1% of the time I can find Jim Carey funny, where 99% of the time I wont even crack a smile.

Houellebecq

Humour is both subjective and context dependent.

The sight of a funny little man with a Charlie Chaplin moustache dressed in a silly uniform yelling and frothing at the mouth in front of a rapt audience would be hilarious if we didn't know he was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. I know a Life of Brian was supposedly a parody of the Life of Jesus but it could easily be a parody of the life of Hitler or, for that matter, the probably non-existent Muhammad.

Cossomby

Australia you're standing in it was before my time here. However I thought the Melbourne trams had invaded Sydney. Are you telling me it never happened?

I confess I occasionally like watching some of the really old time comedies with Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy. Charlie Chaplin, of course, was more tragicomedy than outright comedy.

Seinfeld never worked for me.

Anyone here remember "The Odd Couple?"

OK this links to a youtube video of Hitler in "full froth"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q-6H4xOUrs

If it was Charlie Chaplin sprouting this garbage with a laughtrack we might find it somewhere between mildly amusing and side-splittingly funny. But knowing that it led to tens of millions of deaths makes it most unfunny.

Steven, my wife had a touch of food poisoning and in between changing the buckets and towels I thought I would inject some humour into the event. As she looked up all red faced and sick I said "want to hear a joke" then launched into the horse walks into a bar and the barman says "why the long face". She just glares and tells me to go. When I came back 10 minutes later to check on her she said that the joke was all wrong, it should go:

A horse walks into the bar and the barman say's "why the long face".
Then a donkey walks into the bar and the barman say's "why the long face".
Then a zebra walks into the bar and the barman say's "we don't serve your kind in here".

It broke me up

Scene from Married with children:

Peg and Marcie sitting in the kitchen:
Marcie: Oh Peg, men are such fools.
Peg: I know, I married their king.

But generally my comedic leanings if we are not talking home grown is British over American 70% of the time, and out of the 30% American the Marx Bros take up 15%.