Experts from the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado have spent the past nine months working out which are America’s 50 funniest cities. Really it’s a crazy project. Crazier still is a book recently published by team members Peter McGraw and Joel Warner – The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. Can such a search ever make sense?

To me, born in London and raised close by, sample jokes from leading American cities are all funny. But is it possible for such humour to survive a journey of several thousands of miles? Can it draw laughs as far away as, say, Southeast Asia? Well, here’s a gag from top US city Chicago, where the central business district is known as the Loop: “A man gets on a bus and asks the driver, “Does dis bus go to da Loop?” The driver replies, “No, it goes ‘beep-beep’.”

More jokes are available through the New York Times site, together with a full report. See what you think.