The funny farm

Commonly used as a light-hearted alternative to asylum or “mental hospital”, the term has also been used in other spheres.

In entertainment it was used informally to describe a school for clowns founded by Giuseppe Gomito in Victorian London.

In agriculture, it referred to vast sheds used in the production of fungi. Darkened “funny farms” sprang up throughout the USA in the 1940s to cater for the explosion in demand for mushrooms for use in Campbell’s condensed cream-of-mushroom soup.

It is also likely to be a corruption of the earlier English slang term “fanny farm” (brothel).