Over the weekend, the Crab Museum in Margate, England held the inaugural World's Funniest Crab Joke competition, in celebration of International Crab Day. The Guardian covered the competition—and oh, it was fierce, perhaps even a bit snippy!
An expert panel of judges, including the comedians Harry Hill, Rose Matafeo, Sally Phillips and Phil Wang, as well as children from Ramsgate Arts primary school, scored their favourite jokes before the totals were tallied and a winner crowned.
The only rules of the contest were that the jokes should be kept PG, and that lobsters could be mentioned in the setup of the joke, but not the "pinchline".
Organisers said that, although most of the 700 submissions did abide by the rules, several jokes "were disqualified for scientific inaccuracy, and rather a lot for lewdness".
50-year old Leon Price went home with the prize of the night, with this side-slappin' stinger:
Man walks into a restaurant with a crab under his arm and says 'do you make crab cakes'? Manager answers 'yes, we do'. 'Good' says the man. 'because it's his birthday'
The Crab Museum also published a shortlist of the other potential competitors. Here ar a few of my favorites:
A horseshoe crab walks into a bar. "Why the ventral face?" the bartender asks… The crab replies "mind your own business and please tip a pint of lager and a packet of crisps onto the pub carpet"
How did the crab get out of prison? It used it's escape claws
Why did the crab cross the road? It didn't. It used the sidewalk
And now for the pinchline: competition crowns world's funniest crab joke [Patrick Barkham / The Guardian]
