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	THE LAST LAUGH Steve Tomkins reflects on our Laugh Judgment project, which started off as a competition and ended as a live show. Click these links to see the top ten funny and offensive jokes. IT'S BEEN A FUNNY old thing – the Laugh Judgment. Ship of Fools' search for the funniest and most offensive religious jokes of all eternity provoked Julie Burchill, Britain's spikiest newspaper columnist, to write in The Times: "If one must choose a modern symbol of what is so good about Britain I would choose shipoffools.com." On the other hand, when revealing the two top tens at the UK’s Greenbelt Arts festival, one of our panelists walked off stage to avoid hearing them. What’s more, he warned the audience that God might just strike them dead if they laughed. How's that for a warm-up act? Before that great and dreadful day, we ran the Laugh Judgment poll and discussion forum for two months – inviting all and sundry to send us their best and worst religious jokes. In all, 951 jokes were submitted. Various issues became clear. The most striking was how many people refused to be offended by any religious jokes or sniggering at sacred subjects. They were in a clear majority. Almost everyone was offended by racism or sexism, but being a Godist is quite acceptable. The Lord Almighty is fair game, it seems, and blasphemy a minority concern. The most common complaint was not "Profanity!" but "Heard it!" What does this tell us? That the continuing decline of deference in the West makes today's Christians more relaxed about holy things than ever before? Or just that Ship of Fools readers are more degenerate and hardened than most? FOR THOSE WHO were offended, two subjects stood out: the passion of Christ and, even more, priestly pedophilia. The first, of course, is at the heart of the Christian faith and powerfully emotive. "For me, that's when it gets personal," said Gill H, on the Laugh Judgment discussion board. "It would be like telling a joke about my mother being raped, or something." Others felt that that such violence was beyond a joke – whomever it involved. Priestly pedophilia, meanwhile, has everything: sex, religion, authority figures, child abuse – the last taboo in the west – and the demonisation of a minority. One joke was described as "an exercise in how sick a writer can make you feel in eight lines". But while many regarded such jokes as horribly insensitive, one responded: "I was sexually abused as a child, too. I was also exposed to the healing power of black humor." It also became clear that we read one joke and hear totally different things. What was blatantly and indefensibly racist to most readers, merely mocked racist attitudes to others. The infamous "Girl on a cliff" joke was a sick laugh at child abuse... or anti-Catholic... or just about bad luck. It all underlines how hugely subjective comedy is – not just whether or not we laugh, but what we think we're laughing at – and how insane it is to legislate for it. It seems heartening to me that some Christians are so hard to offend. There is no subject unfit for comedy, to my mind. What offends in some jokes is their attitude to their subject – cynical, belittling, marginalising. The more willing we are to laugh at our own religion, the less likely we are to embrace religious stupidity, uncritically. NONE OF WHICH prepared us for the unplugged show at Greenbelt. Jokes that fail to offend onscreen, clearly gain a lot from being heard live. And it wasn't just “liveness” that charged the atmosphere. Our original idea was to have a stand-up comedian deliver the jokes, and we thought it would be hard to find any panelists who would get offended. In fact, the reverse happened. We failed to find a comedian to perform the jokes – so James Cary, a comedy scriptwriter and one of our panelists, agreed to do the honours. Until he read them before the show. He was happy to discuss why he hated them, but just couldn't be in the room while they were read out. So, with just a few hours to go, Simon (Ship of Fools' editor) and I prepared ourselves to deliver the top ten funnies – until another panelist, Andy Harrison, gallantly agreed to read out the top ten most offensive jokes. He's an actor, he can do anything. The large venue was packed and the first half of the show went well, as we read the funniest jokes and talked about the Laugh Judgment online poll. Even in this “lighter” section, the panel explained their objections to certain jokes. Journalist Simon Jones, for example, talked about how a fairly innocuous gag about Catholic priests could turn into something far nastier in the context of Northern Ireland. James talked about how the Religious Hatred Bill could stifle free speech. He fervently believes we must allow people the freedom to offend Christians with despicable jokes, and allow Christians the freedom to offend them back with the gospel. HALFWAY THROUGH, we suggested that those already uncomfortable with what they had heard, could leave – no questions asked. Plenty did. James walked out, reminding the audience about the Lord's propensity for defending the glory of his name. With lightning. So the mood was darker already. As we ploughed through the ten most offensive religious jokes, it just got darker and heavier. Andy started off delivering the jokes with gusto and accents. By the end, he was reading them as if signing his own death warrant. The laughter was scattered – though from some quarters uproarious – but grew less and tailed off into stoney silence for the last few. After each joke we took a vote on whether to continue, and the last was carried by about one. It was a joke I had thought was very good on paper – though horribly dark. Now we were waiting for hell to swallow us whole. For the final discussion, James came back and said that anyone who had laughed should repent. One audience member said his comments were actually the most offensive thing they had heard. I guess that James, being passionate about his freedom to offend people with the gospel, was pretty chuffed about that. Following the end of the show, the response was overwhelming. Though many people hated the jokes, they were pleased we had given them an airing, and that the issues raised had been discussed openly. All in all, it was a pretty weird experience, but left us encouraged that there are a lot of Christians around who don't intend to do their religion by knee-jerk. And the fewer jerks of any kind there are in the Christian world, the better.
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