Some of my favourite “gag” comedians are effectively cartoonists, drawing absurd short films in your mind’s eye using just a few simple words. The deadpan US comic Steven Wright is a notable master. “I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint,” he drawls. “It was in a shape of a house.” Charming, yet somehow anarchic: like something from a Tex Avery animation.

The late Mitch Hedberg was equally brilliant (if you’ve never heard of him, look up his albums online). “The thing about tennis is that no matter how much I play, I’ll never be as good as a wall,” he complains. That’s a funny idea in itself, but Hedberg instantly tops it: “I played a wall once. They’re fucking relentless.”

In each case, brevity is key. I assume these gags stemmed from the comic in question making a passing observation (eg “I suppose you could argue that walls are intrinsically better than people at tennis”), remembering and noting it as funny, then trying to cram said observation into the shortest space possible, while still leaving room for their unique trademark rhythm (in Wright’s case, blankly laconic; in Hedberg’s, twitchy-yet-stoned). As demonstrations of condensed poetic skill go, they’re as impressive – to me at any rate – as the works of, say, Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy or Kurt Vonnegut.

Buddy [Hackett] was a student of the science of comedy. His favorite Las Vegas stage was at the Sahara. “I was offered twice the dough to move to a certain hotel,” he told me, “but nothing doing. Comics who work that room always flop. There’s a physical reason for that. The stage is above the eye lines of too much of the audience. At the Sahara, the seats are banked and most of the audience is looking down at the stage. Everybody in the business knows: Up for singers, down for comics. The people want to idealize a singer. They want to feel superior to a comic. You’re trying to make them laugh. They can’t laugh at someone they’re looking up to.”

And here are the ten rules:

1. Know the joke.
2. Never step on the punch word. If at all possible, the punch-line should end on the word that reveals the joke.
3. Use a four-letter word if the joke requires it.
4. Never explain.
5. Do not elaborate unnecessarily.
6. Never repeat.
7. Beware of accents.
8. Be careful about ethnic or religious jokes.
9. If it’s a long joke, it may better funnier if it is told quickly.
10. If the joke really works, you can bend a few rules, but not Rule #1.