Henry Goodman reads Isaac Asimov's sci-fi tale investigating where humans get their sense of humour

Jokester
6.30pm/12.30am BBC 7

Where does Man's sense of humour come from and what would the human race do without it? These are the questions at the heart of an unnerving tale of the future from visionary science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, author of I, Robot. Based on his 1956 short story and read here by Henry Goodman, the mystery begins when computer analyst Timothy Whistler becomes concerned that Noel Meyerhof, one of the world's genius Grand Masters, is feeding jokes to Multivac, "the most complex computer ever built". Whistler's pursuit of the truth will give him the answer to where the world's jokes come from, and it isn't Bob Monkhouse... Jeremy Aspinall