First ever Scottish joke unearthed by Sir Sean Connery

With a roll-call of comics that includes Harry Lauder, Chic Murray and Billy Connolly, Scotland can claim to be the envy of the comedy world.

But it all started more than 10 centuries ago with a joke so bad it ought to be accompanied by rolling tumbleweed and the tolling of a church bell.

According to a new book, co-written by Sir Sean Connery and Murray Grigor, the documentary film maker, the oldest recorded example of Scottish humour, dates back to the 9th Century - reports The Times.

The joke concerns a conversation between the priest Johannes Scottus — John the Scot — and Charles the Bald, the king of France.

The pair were sitting at a banqueting table quaffing goblets of wine. Offended by the priest’s loutish, drunken behaviour, the monarch asked rhetorically: “What separates a Sot [drunk] from a Scot?” Quick as a flash, the priest replied: “Only a table”, implying that the king was more drunk than him.

The joke, which was passed down through the centuries, was recorded in Latin by the English historian William of Malmesbury in 1143.

It appealed to Connery, a fan of Murray’s one-liners, who decided to include it in the book, Connery’s Scotland, in a chapter charting the history of Scottish comedy.

The book, to be published next year, will trace more than 1,000 years of mirth from the Rabelaisian wit of royalist Sir Thomas Urqhart of Cromarty, who died in a fit of laughter when he heard of the restoration of Charles II, to the contribution of James Beattie, an 18th-century Scottish philosopher whose theories on what makes a joke funny are still relevant today. Personal tales from Connery’s early exposure to music-hall humour in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, will also be included. The former James Bond star will also examine why so much Scots humour is self-deprecating .

“This chapter will delve deep into history to reveal the twists and turns of Scottish humour through the centuries, and end on those masters of Glasgow patter and psychotic surrealism, the cartoonist Bud Neill and the comedians Chic Murray and Billy Connolly,” said Grigor.

“The oldest joke is a key element and really appeals to Sean, who likes quite quirky and surreal humour. It will be an enjoyable chapter but it will also have its serious side. Humour defines people.”

Plans for the book, which will be published by Canongate to mark the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Union, were finalised last week.

Other topics to be covered include Scottish sports, literature, architecture and legends, as well as the early life of the former milkman, who left school at 13.

Connery, who claims some of his friends believed Brigadoon — the 1954 film about a fictional Scottish community — was a documentary about Scotland, hopes the book will dispel some of the myths about his homeland.

He previously pulled out of biography deals with childhood friend Meg Henderson, and then writer Hunter Davies.

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