How often have you been among friends, listening to them all offering up hilarious jokes and when it became your turn you were forced to say, ”I don’t know any - I can’t remember jokes?”  I have heard that line way too many times and feel something must be done!  There are many books available on the topic of remembering jokes. If you’re anything like me though, you don’t appreciate the art enough to read an entire book, but think it would be extremely helpful when you hear that joke you can’t wait to repeat, and know you will never remember. 

Here are some great tips I found that originally appeared in The Toastmaster, December 2003.  Good luck on remembering and perfecting your favorite joke. I am sure you will WOW your friends the next time you’re the expected joke-teller!

Decide if you want to remember the joke. A joke must make you laugh before you will want to repeat it. If you don’t tell a joke with complete conviction, you will greatly diminish your chances of getting a laugh.

Ask to hear it again. Ask the person who told it to you to repeat it. He or she will be flattered and gladly do it, and hearing the joke twice will double your chances of remembering it. If others are present, they will probably not appreciate hearing it again, so wait for the first available moment to draw the teller aside.

Make mental notes and visualize. Just after someone tells you a joke, silently repeat to yourself the exact wording used, descriptions of characters, and any mannerisms that made the joke funny. Wait until the joke is over, though. By visualizing, you are creating a movie in your mind. Later, when you tell it to someone, just roll the movie! One easy way to do this is to put someone you know into the joke.

Repeat the joke back to the person who told it to you. The person who told you the joke is the best coach to help you tell it. While listening, he or she can help you fine-tune those nuances that are so crucial to the proper execution of a joke. You may not have to repeat the whole joke, but be sure to repeat key phrases.

Rehearse. Practice, practice, practice. Consider all the elements that make that joke funny, including lengths of any appropriate pauses, physical motions that help the setup and, especially, rehearse the punch line. Speak it out loud, and review it mentally.

Change the joke. Just as the best way to learn how to play a musical passage on an instrument is to change it a little, the same is true of jokes. If you alter the joke slightly, you will remember it easier. This is because it now has some of your own personality stamped on it.

Have a test person. Choose a friend to be your trial audience whenever you want to tell a joke for the first time, preferably someone who shares the same sense of humor. Once you have successfully told a joke, your subconscious will easily and frequently bring it back to you. Success breeds success, and the more you tell and the more people laugh, the more your confidence will grow.

Tell the joke as often as possible. When you hear a joke, tell it to someone as soon as possible. Once you have successfully told a joke, you will remember it for days, weeks, months and even years.

Categorize the joke. In the same way you organize information in your computer into folders, you could put jokes into categories in your mind. For example, “lawyer jokes” go together, so imagine the best joke for setting up one or following another. If one joke leads into another, it will be easy to remember a whole series of jokes. (It’s been observed that Robin Williams tells “jokes within jokes.” But how did he start? Like anyone else, one joke at a time.

Imagine the best circumstances in which to tell the joke. After hearing a joke, you might think of a person or group that would like that joke. If so, imagine telling them that joke, so that next time you are with them, you’ll remember to share it with them.

Think about who told you the joke and why you liked it. Suppose you didn’t use any of the previous techniques except the last one, and then you see your friends and want to tell them the joke but can’t remember it. What then? Try to picture the person who told you the joke that will sometimes trigger the memory. Or think back to the feeling you had when you heard it. What was it about that joke that made you want to share it? If you can remember the punch line, you can usually work backward and reconstruct the joke.

Write it down! This is the most important advice, more important than the rest put together. Unless you write it down, you will forget more than you remember. It doesn’t have to be the whole joke; a few key words will do. Just jot it down and transfer it to a notepad or your computer as soon as you can. Do not write out the whole joke, because when it comes to telling it, it will be more natural if you have written just enough to remember the set up and the payoff.