The oldest joke in the world.
This is true. This is-- [chuckles]
Sure it's true. Why the fuck not? You know...
Everything's true now.
"Fake news!" "Fuck you it's true." All right...
Everything's fuckin' true. But this is true.
It is.
What happened is my friend Cara, who is an Egyptologist,
she calls me up from Egypt and says, "We found this joke."
I was like, "That's great. Tell me the joke."
So she tells me the joke, but I don't speak Ancient Egyptian.
It was like, "Owl, owl, guy with a dog's head." And I'm like...
It's not that funny.
[audience laughing]
Wow, I had no idea so many Ancient Egyptians were here this evening.
You guys are like, "Oh! [chuckles]
Yeah, yeah.
Ha-ha! Nice one!
Ha-ha! Good!
Finally, a joke for us.
Two! Two jokes for us."
[chuckles]
So she tells me the English translation of the joke, and I'm like, "That's weird.
I know that joke."
The joke was told to me
by Drew Carey,
one of my oldest friends.
I'm like, "I thought Drew was from Cleveland."
[audience laughs]
I've known him for 20 fucking years.
He's got a house there and everything.
So I called up Drew, and I said, "Hey man, you know that--
That joke you told me?" And I tell him the joke.
I said, "That's the oldest joke in the world."
And he turned into a bat flew away.
[audience laughing]
[chuckles]
It's getting more and more stupid, isn't it? All right, no, this is true.
What happened is, I called him up,
I said, "You know that joke you told me?" And I tell him the joke.
I said, "That's the oldest joke in the world,"
and he said, "That is weird." And I said, "Yeah!"
He said, "No, what's weird about it is I didn't tell you that joke."
I went, "What?"
I said, "No, you told me that joke."
And I was like, "Shut up, Drew Carey!"
And he was like, "You shut up, Craig Ferguson!"
I was like, "No I won't!" He was like, "No, I won't!"
Then we started to kind of tickle fight, then we were kissing. We were kissing.
It was a really strange phone call.
[audience laughs]
All right. I got sidetracked.
Here's the joke.
This is the joke.
The way I heard the joke, it wasn't-- It wasn't set in Ancient Egypt,
but in every respect, it's exactly the same joke.
It's about two hunters, but the way I heard about it,
it was, you know, it was set in a gentleman's club in Victorian times.
It was very different to a gentlemen's club now.
You know, a gentleman's club now is like, "Hey! Give me a dollar,
I'll give you chlamydia," but back then...
[audience laughing]
Sorry, I was just doing my job.
You pay extra for those seats. Um...
So here's the joke. Anyway, the joke is this:
It's two hunters: An old hunter and a young hunter,
and they're going through the trophy room of this club, you know,
and the old hunter is showing off. He's looking at the heads on the wall,
and he said, "This here...
This a lion that I shot in Africa.
I used to be a dentist in the Midwest."
You remember that? Remember that?
Do you remember that was the thing that everybody in the world was mad at?
Simpler times, huh?
"This a lion that I shot in Africa. It's a very frightening story.
I was just walking through the jungle, and the lion lept out at me.
Came towards me, I was like, 'Oh!' And he's coming towards me,
Sharp-sharp claws, bitey-bitey mouth, scary eyes,
I was like... [pants] and he comes very close,
I take out my gun, shot him right between the eyes."
The young hunter says, "Good, sir. Good. Well done."
He was like, "Yes, yes. And this...
This is a very similar story. This is a tiger.
I was walking through the Jungle in India,
this tiger jumped out at me, stripey face, scratchy claws, bitey mouth.
Coming towards me, he's gonna bite me!
I take out my gun, and I shot him right between the eyes."
The young hunter says, "Very good, sir."
He goes, "Yeah, and here, the scariest story of all:
The rhinoceros. I was walking across the Serengeti,
and I heard, 'Thumpity-thump thump. Thump, thump, thump.
Thump thump thump,' coming towards me,
I turn around, it's the rhinoceros!
He's coming towards me, big stompy feet and a big spiky.
He's coming towards me, stompy, spiky, he's gonna kill me!
I take out my gun, and I'm like, 'Oh!' I drop my gun, and...
[screams]
...and I shit myself."
[audience laughs]
The young hunter says, "I would have too. That sounds terrifying."
He went, "No, not then! Right now, when I said, 'Ah!'"
To be fair, I did not say it was the best joke in the world.
Jokes have improved immensely since then.
But it is, in fact, the oldest joke in the world, and so, with that...
we are done.
[audience groans]
That sounded a little bit like relief.
[audience laughing]
You got your one joke...
and that's all you're going to get.
Unless you get the special Netflix subscription,
which gives you an extra joke.
[audience laughing]