The Funniest Six Minutes Ever Filmed (And Yes, People Literally Collapsed)

If you’ve never seen Tim Conway’s “Galley Slaves” sketch from The Carol Burnett Show (Season 11, 1978), stop whatever you’re doing and find it right now. No exaggeration: this is the single most destructive piece of comedy ever captured on television. Not “one of the funniest,” not “pretty funny for its time”; this is the comedic equivalent of a nuclear detonation in slow motion.

The premise is absurdly simple: Harvey Korman plays a cruel Roman galley captain whipping his slaves to row faster. The slaves include Vicki Lawrence, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke (guest star that week), and… Tim Conway as “The Oldest Man in the World,” a 4,000-year-old slave who moves like his bones were glued together with molasses.

That’s it. That’s the entire setup.

And yet, in under six minutes, Conway completely annihilates every living soul in the studio.

He doesn’t rush a single joke. He doesn’t raise his voice. He just commits, 100 %, to the bit of being ancient beyond comprehension. Every microscopic movement is a landmine:

The way he tries to lift an oar and it takes four full seconds for his arm to even acknowledge the command.
The toe-tap that arrives so late it feels like a glitch in the space-time continuum.
The stumble that sends Harvey Korman into full cardiac-arrest laughter, tears streaming, barely able to speak his lines.
The moment Conway slowly, agonizingly tries to sit on the bench… and misses by two feet, collapsing in the gentlest heap imaginable while the entire set loses the ability to breathe.

Watch Harvey Korman. Seriously, just watch him. The man is a legendary straight man who prided himself on never breaking. Here, he doesn’t just break; he shatters. At one point he turns away from the camera because he’s crying so hard he can’t continue. Carol Burnett later said she had to bite the inside of her cheek until it bled to keep from completely losing it on air. Even the boom mic operator is visibly shaking with laughter off-screen.

Dick Van Dyke, who had worked with Conway for years on other shows, fares no better. You can see the exact second he realizes he’s doomed; his face goes from “let’s do the sketch” to “I’m going to die here.”

And the audience? 200 people reduced to wheezing, helpless wrecks. The laughter isn’t polite chuckles; it’s primal, violent, the kind that hurts your ribs and makes you beg for it to stop while simultaneously praying it never ends.

Fifty years later, this clip still circulates like comedy scripture. YouTube comments are full of people saying they had to pause it multiple times because they literally couldn’t breathe. Grown adults admit to pulling over on the highway because they were laughing too hard they couldn’t see.

Tim Conway didn’t tell jokes in this sketch. He performed a hostile takeover of human biology. He weaponized slowness. He proved, once and for all, that the funniest thing in the world isn’t a punchline; it’s perfect, merciless commitment to a ridiculous character while everyone around you slowly descends into madness.

10/10. Five stars. Zero mercy. The funniest thing ever put on television, and it’s not even close.

If you watch one sketch for the rest of your life, make it this one. Just have oxygen nearby. You’re going to need it.