Tom Lehrer/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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  • While all of his songs are funny, not to mention incredibly quotable, his live albums include a few moments that have the audience laughing so hard that Lehrer actually has to stop and wait for them to calm down. Most infamously, from "Bright College Days":

Lehrer: Soon we'll be out, amid the cold world's strife/Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life...
Audience: [loses it]
Lehrer: Ready?
Audience: [loses it again]

  • Another has Lehrer recount a novel a friend of his wrote, "about a young necrophiliac who finally achieved his boyhood ambition by becoming coroner." This only drew a few chuckles, but his next line brought the house down: "The rest of you can look it up when you get home."
  • Lehrer's appearance in the Cameron Mackintosh tribute concert Hey Mr Producer. He makes his entrance at the piano, on a moving platform. When it comes to a stop, he remarks "they promised me seatbelts". He then credits himself for Mackintosh's success, saying "the combined profits of Cats and Tomfoolery" made Cameron into the man he is today". When talking about Mackintosh's rags-to-riches story, he said "even then, he had exquisite taste in rags". He then goes on to perform "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", to an audience that includes the Queen of England.
  • "The Irish Ballad", about a girl who murders her family:

And when at last the police came by
Her little pranks she did not deny
To do so she would have had to lie
And lying she knew was a sin.

  • "The Vatican Rag". For example:

Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There the guy who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original.

    • Also, the introduction - "I have here a modest example..." Tom Lehrer has never provided a "modest" example of anything in his life and his audience knows it.