Totally unknown American Comedian Steve Roye has apparently written a software program that analyses how funny a comedian is. Since it apparently proves that Bill Cosby is funnier than Eddie Izzard and Robin Williams, I doubt it's accuracy already. It also 'proves' that Roye himself is funnier than both.

Hmmm.

His software records the ratio of audience laughter to the time taken to tell the joke, and produces a Positive Audience Response (PAR) rating. This is apparently all he needs to know to declare how funny someone is, and fails to take into account, ooooh, let's see, pretty much everything else that a comedian might do. It's also biased towards gag merchants with a quick fire delivery compared to someone like Izzard, who has a more random approach. Funnily enough, it makes no measure of how much the audience are laughing, either.

Roye believes that his software will become invaluable within a few years, with businesses booking comedians based on his results alone. Personally, I'd choose to look at some other numbers if you really want to analyze a comedian - the amount of people who are prepared to pay to watch them, for a start.

Oh, by the way, apparently the software can be operated by someone with 'no understanding of comedy'. Maybe we've solved the secret of how he came up with it then.