THE next time Lenny Henry has them falling about in the aisles, he should perhaps thank not his material but the fact that he is from Dudley.
The Birmingham accent is the one most likely to increase the chances of being found funny, research indicates. It also, however, makes the speaker come across as less intelligent.
A team spent two months analysing the way regional accents affect how humorous a person is deemed to be, and the Brummie brogue — which also channels the jokes of Frank Skinner and Jasper Carrott — came out top. The Scouse accent, which Paul O’Grady uses for Lily Savage, was the next funniest, capturing 15.8 per cent of the vote, while the Geordie accent came third with 14.3 per cent.
Received Pronunciation amused the lowest number of people, with just 1.1 per cent finding a gag told in RP funny.
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The Mancunian and Glaswegian accents got 2.1 per cent and 3.4 per cent respectively.
The Welsh accent was deemed the least suited to one-liners, while for bawdy humour a Cockney accent was most likely to get a laugh.
There was an inverse relationship between the humour and perceived intelligence of an accent, with Brummie, Scouse and Geordie also most likely to create the impression that the speaker was dim, according to the study for the Paramount Comedy Channel.
The test joke was: “Some workmen are eating sandwiches on a girder hundreds of metres above the ground. One says to another: “You ever get that urge Frank? It begins with looking down from 50 storeys up, thinking about the meaninglessness of life, listening to dark voices inside you, and thinking, ‘Should I . . . should I . . . push someone off?’ ”