The Hall of Fame will bring together writers, actors, politicians, musicians, artists, business people and many more who are often household names, but also Master Punners we have discovered who may be less celebrated, but who most definitely deserve to be.
We welcome all suggestions of candidates for elevation to the Hall of Fame from our readers, and will give due credit in these pages to everyone who helps us to create the World's finest collection of Puns.
In addition to the Punners selected as immediate members of the Hall of Fame, each year on December 31 we shall induct the five leading Punners from the Pun 100 Index of our contributors, as voted for by our readers, to membership, with an official Certificate of Membership being sent to every duly elected member.
Here are the initial inductees to the World Punning Hall of Fame, in alphabetical order:
Some of the submissions by our contributors turn out to be minor variations on well-known puns and, like comfy old slippers, we treasure them and publish them under the 'Old Favourites' tag.
Among these, however, exists a handful of truly superb and excruciating puns that have been around for decades, but as far as we know nobody has been able to trace the brilliant original authors.
We honour these 'Anonymous Classics' here in the Hall of Fame among the other greatest puns of all time, and welcome proposals for other Classics to join this select group.
Brian Bilston
Follow him on Twitter @brian_bilston
Statesman, soldier, holder of almost every major office in British politics, Honorary Citizen of the United States, orator, historian, Nobel Prize winning author, artist and keen amateur bricklayer, Winston Spencer Churchill is a colossus of British and world history.
Often forgotten is his sharp wit which, together with his passion for the spoken and written word, has left a collection of brilliant bons mots that may have been spontaneous, but were more likely finely crafted.
As he once said: "I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks."
Paul Eggleston
Follow him on Twitter @pauleggleston
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Mark Haggan is a businessman and charity activist, particularly in the fields of student volunteering, education and international development and currently chairman of two British NGOs: The AIESEC Foundation and the award winning READ International.
He is also the author of The Musings of Mark Haggan, an entertaining and eclectic blog which features "random stories, bad jokes, obscure travels, motor racing and strange occurrences…", in which every Friday since April 2013 he publishes a group of puns and jokes on a specific topic. Disarmingly modest, he always presents them with "…usual caveats of not being that funny or original…", but we have discovered many superb puns that we haven't seen or heard elsewhere.
Humphrey Lyttleton (1921-2008)
Born Julius Henry Marx, one of five brothers, 'Groucho' formed his spectacle-wearing, wisecracking, cigar-smoking, greasepaint-moustachioed and -eyebrowed character with the strange, stooped posture and loping walk in the days of vaudeville, where he and his brothers became big stars, before transferring their characters to the big screens of Hollywood.
In 13 films made with his brothers - the majority just with Leonard ('Chico') and Arthur ('Harpo') - he became a huge star who went on to a further career in radio and television.
Frequently pun-based, his sharp one-liners, often with a strong dose of innuendo, and his thinly disguised insults became his trade mark, with a number of them entering into everyday usage.
Born in 1893 in Long Branch, NJ, Dorothy was a poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, famous for her wit, withering put-downs, and observations of worldly vanity, especially in her adopted home of Hollywood.
Despite deploring her reputation as a writer of "wisecracks", for her epitaph she suggested, "Excuse my dust".
However, the epitaph at her final resting place reads: "Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph s This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988."
Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Missouri, Mark Twain claimed that his pseudonym came from his time working as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, where two fathoms or twelve feet was the safe depth of water for a steamboat, measured on a line dropped into the river and notified by the cry of "mark twain", meaning the water was navigable.
A prolific writer, whose works included The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (often called "the Great American Novel"), Twain also became a very successful and highly paid humorous speaker - what might today be called a stand-up comedian. His obituary in the New York Times said he was the "greatest American humorist of his age" and William Faulkner dubbed him "the father of American literature".
Vine is the only stand-up comedian who has twice won the award for best joke at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in 2010 and 2014. He was also runner-up in 2011 and 2012.
His winning puns are here for 2010 and 2014.
Find him online at timvine.com
Mae West (1893-1980)
Steven Wright
