Oldest Scottish joke

Sean Connery has co-authored a forthcoming book about Scotland and his life: Connery’s Scotland [EDIT (3/26/2010): Now Being a Scot]. It has a chapter on the history of Scottish comedy, including a 9th-century Scottish joke about an actual Scottish priest and the king of France sitting across a table from each other drinking wine and eating:

Offended by the priest’s loutish, drunken behaviour, the monarch asked rhetorically: “What separates a Sot [drunk] from a Scot?” Quick as a flash, the priest replied: “Only a table.”

(How do you play “ba dum bum” on the bagpipes?)

One Response to “Oldest Scottish joke”

  1. [...] John Cleese of Monty Python fame recently announced he was quitting comedy, possibly to do documentaries but not to write a history of comedy as wrongly reported by The Times. (However, Sean Connery’s book on Scotland will include some Scottish comedy history, as I reported a few weeks ago in Oldest Scottish joke.) [...]

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