The Ten Funniest Books: UK Division

My favorite online used bookseller, abebooks.com, polled 555 of its UK customers, asking them to name the funniest book they had ever read. The results:

1. Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (1933)
2. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
3. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
4. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)
5. Wilt by Tom Sharpe (1976)
6. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
7. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
8. The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse (1938)
9. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (1996)
10. Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall by Spike Milligan (1971)

Note that P.G. Wodehouse has two books in the top ten, Right Ho, Jeeves and The Code of the Woosters. And that both of these were published more than 70 years ago.

Even Wiki succumbs to Wodehouse's charm with this anecdote:

When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le Touquet, France, instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognise the seriousness of the conflict. He was subsequently taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940 and interned by them for a year, first in Belgium, then at Tost (now Toszek) in Upper Silesia (now in Poland). He is recorded as saying, "If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like..."

There is controversy about broadcasts Wodehouse made from Germany at the start of the war.

There's also a list of his books.