Ian Hislop examines the earliest examples of British humour. He begins his quest in the dark ages, not known as a well-spring of comic opportunity. Nevertheless, in the pages of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum - Ecclesiastical History of England, there is wordplay. Not only that it's wordplay that obeys the comedy rule of three and it was potent enough to have a part in the naming of a nation. And how his fellow monks must have laughed.
