WHY didn’t the camel laugh?

This may sound like a philosophical question, but is in fact the beginning of a joke.

Not a very funny one granted, but a joke all the same.

To be precise, it’s a dad joke, so it’s not meant to be hilarious.

And it celebrates the news this week that dad jokes are making a comeback.

Apparently, it’s a reaction to all those nasty, cruel jokes out there. Dad jokes are seen as the perfect antidote.

Well, excuse me, but I didn’t know dad jokes had gone out of fashion. As you can tell, I’ve been delivering them for 30 years and it hasn’t done me any harm. Quite a few listeners have complained, mind you.

The great beauty of a dad joke is that the lamer they are the better. In fact, I’m on the hunt for the worst joke ever.

These are some of the ‘pearls’ from yesteryear. When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Doctor. Doctor who? Yes. How did you know? And why did the Ipad go to the dentist? Because it had bluetooth.

There are thousands of similar gags out there, which will have many of you groaning with displeasure.

And that’s part of the charm of a dad joke. I know it’s bad, you know it’s bad, but I’m still going to tell it anyway.

It won’t surprise you to discover that I was brought up on dad jokes. I think he had a secret stash of them.

I can remember telling one to my son when he was about five. And he rolled his eyes as if to say ‘grow up, dad’.

That, my friends, is all the encouragement you need to keep going.

I am sure he must have grimaced when I was out and I started telling a joke. He probably thought he’s not going to tell the ‘loan arranger’ joke again for the fifth time today. He can’t possibly. Oh! there it is.

Even now he’s a lot older, I can still get that pained expression on his face when another witticism springs to mind. It’s a joy.

As it is, dad jokes have had a bad press. I can’t think why and are often seen as on a par with slapstick humour.

As a child I didn’t care too much for this type of humour, but as I grew older I warmed to it. And to this day there is nothing funnier than someone slipping on a banana skin, providing it’s not you.

A few years ago I was walking with a fellow journalist along the pavement. About a half a mile ahead was a bollard in plain sight for all to see. Now my fellow walker must have seen it, it was in his path.

But as we got closer, he was still on the same route to hit it. I just assumed he would sidestep it at the last moment.

But as he came to it, he turned to me to say something, clearly didn’t see the bollard and fell over it. Let’s just say, it had hit a rather sensitive area.

He rolled around in agony and I dashed to help and all was well.

But about an hour later, as he had finally recovered from his ordeal, I began to recall the event and burst into hysterics. Suppressing the mirth to help him had only made things worse.

After about half an hour of putting up with my guffaws, he turned to me and said: “It wasn’t that funny!”

Which of course, made the whole situation 10 times funnier and it was a good half-an-hour before I settled down.

And just to show I can take it as well as dish it out, a friend of mine bought a photo of me in Majorca just so he could laugh at it.

It was a picture of me sulking on holiday because I wasn’t with my girlfriend at the time. Everybody at this party was having a whale of a time and posing for individual pictures with the photographer who had been invited to the event and despite me being in a foul mood, he snapped a picture of me looking glum.

In the background were people laughing and joking and enjoying themselves, in the foreground was a surly faced me.

Whenever he felt low, my ‘friend’ would pull the pic out of the drawer and start chuckling to himself.

I could never get it off him and burn it. And even if I could, I had a feeling he had made copies.

So humour is very much a personal thing. And as long as you can find something that makes you laugh it can brighten your day. I say this after spending two weeks recovering from an operation instead of having a special birthday celebration. Indeed, as we all know laughter is the best medicine.

Which reminds me, it’s because he had the hump. Sorry, that’s the punchline to the opening line.

As you can see, the secret of all good comedy, it’s down to.......timing.