comedian

Who would have thought Thomas Hardy’s home county would be the home of the fastest funny man – must be something in the air of the rural county!!

Clive Greenaway, a Tommy Cooper impersonator from Dorset, has broken the world record for the most number of jokes told in one minute. He crammed in 26 one-liners, smashing the previous record of 21.

Deploying pithy classics such as “Pollen count: that’s a tough job,” and “My wife and I were happy, then we met,” 57-year-old Greenaway rattled through the jokes in front of a 250-strong crowd in Haverhill, Suffolk – who had to laugh at each of his jokes to satisfy the Guinness World Records judges.

Greenaway succeeds German comedian Markus Weise, who held the title since 2012, and said: “I am delighted with my record. When I heard a German held the world record for telling the most jokes in one minute, I couldn’t believe it, and knew it had to be broken.”

Greenaway spent months practising his repertoire of what he calls “classic English, old school jokes the likes of Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson used to tell” along with his own material. “I didn’t speed up towards the end, I started flat out and kept that pace up. I probably left a gap of a 400th of a second for the audience to react before I started the next joke. I really enjoyed it although it was a bit of a blur.”