Tom Lehrer briefly managed to con the public, in the late 1950's and early 1960's, into thinking that he was funny - Maybe the public conned him into thinking he was funny - I think he got the joke anyhow. His record company (Decca) managed to secure the rights to his first LP "Songs By Tom Lehrer" and released it in England in 1958. Somehow this LP managed to reach no 7 in the LP charts and hung around for 19 weeks. He even managed to sneak past immigration and perform a series of concerts in London, Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol. Several more LPs followed - "An Evening Wasted With...." and when you would have thought the public would have known better they went out and bought "That Was The Week That Was" in 1965. He then wisely returned to academia (he really was a Mathematics Fellow at Harvard University).

He tried the odd funny song in the 1990's featured somewhere else in this site.