Happiness Quote by Adrian Edmondson

Comedy’s oldest hustle is hiding in plain sight here: the noble mission statement ("make 'em laugh") immediately swerves into a grubby confession ("so we can get a quick look"). Adrian Edmondson plays the pivot for maximum effect. The first clause offers the kind of crowd-pleasing, apolitical promise entertainers love to sell. The second clause punctures it, revealing the real agenda as opportunism and appetite. The joke isn’t just that it’s crude; it’s that it admits the crude motive while pretending to keep the showbiz halo intact.

The wording matters. "Agenda" sounds corporate, almost virtuous, like a brand value. Then "laugh their pants off" is broad, slapstick hyperbole - a safe image of audience abandon. Switching to "Unless they are girls, of course" yanks the audience into a dated, laddish worldview where women are a category, not peers. The escalation from pants to bras turns laughter into a striptease metaphor, making the performer’s desire the punchline and the women’s bodies the currency.

Context is doing a lot of work. Edmondson emerged from the UK’s alternative comedy boom, where shock, provocation, and the demolition of polite TV manners were part of the aesthetic. This line belongs to that tradition: a knowingly ugly thought said aloud to expose the ugliness, or at least to weaponize it for laughs. It lands today as a time capsule of lad culture, daring you to laugh and then notice what your laughter just agreed to.