If you were cloned, would the clone have the same sense of humour as you?

IT SURE WOULD be a time-saver if it did. Imagine how much more productive you’d be if you had someone else to laugh at your own jokes for you. That would free up at least an hour a week for the typical middle-aged dad, who, despite his invariably generous self-appraisal, is deemed by his wife and children to be roughly as humorous as Lenin’s funeral. Ask us how we know.

If we may recast your question slightly, what’s actually at issue here is whether a person’s sense of humour is wholly innate, or whether its development is influenced by external factors. Prevailing scientific thinking suggests that, like most personality traits, a sense of humour is the product of both nature and nurture. ‘There’s almost nothing in the emotion space I can think of that isn’t deeply