If you're headed for a meeting in another country and want to get a laugh--for the right reasons--get a copy of Laughlab: The Scientific Search for the World's Funniest Joke. 
LaughLab was created by Dr. Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire) in collaboration with the British Association for the Advancement of Science. LaughLab was an ongoing scientific experiment to find the worlds funniest joke.
Here are some of the findings:
Differences emerged between nations in terms of the jokes they found funny. People from The Republic of Ireland, the UK, Australia and New Zealand expressed a strong preference for jokes involving word plays.
Americans and Canadians much preferred gags where there was a sense of superiority – either because a person looked stupid, or was made to look stupid by another person, such as:
Texan: “Where are you from?”
Harvard grad: “I come from a place where we do not end our sentences with prepositions.”
Texan: “Okay – where are you from, jackass?”
Many European countries, such as France, Denmark and Belgium, liked jokes that were somewhat surreal:
An Alsatian went to a telegram office, took out a blank form and wrote:
“Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof.”
The clerk examined the paper and politely told the dog: “There are only nine words here. You could send another ‘Woof’for the same price.”
“But,” the dog replied, “that would make no sense at all.”
How about those wild and crazy Germans? Germans did not express a strong preference for any type of joke - this may well explain why they came first in the experiment's league table of funniness – they do not have any strong preferences and so tend to find a wide spectrum of jokes funny.
And the winner is. . .
OK, I live in New Jersey--in the woods--where there are plenty of hunters in season. It's easy to visualize the winning joke as a real conversation:
A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?"
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