This was Norm MacDonald’s set from Comedy Central’s “Roast of Bob Saget.”

Jokes at these roasts are generally as shocking and insulting as possible. Norm subverted expectations by using tame, stock jokes that couldn’t be perceived as real commentary on the target’s character—and paired them with a stilted delivery that further robbed them of any sting.

By refusing to engage in the normative behavior of the roast, he insulted the endeavor itself. The event became an oft-cited example of MacDonald’s “anti-humor.”

He told The Big Lead:

I don’t know how to insult people and call them names and stuff…I was thinking what the fuck am I going to do? And then I thought it would be a fun experiment… ‘Cuz comedy is like a number of things and one is the joke, it has to be funny. So I thought I would do jokes that aren’t funny. Another thing is delivery. So what if I did the delivery wrong also. All that would be left would be context. Just the idea of someone doing bad jokes. I found the jokes in a book my dad gave me when I was a kid called Jokes For Retirement Parties. When I started stand up, that’s when he gave it to me. It was really sweet of him. Like he had this stupid, fucking corny book, “Hey maybe this will help.” And its all these jokes for a guy’s retirement party. I’ll just take the jokes out of there. There are all these super old references. But that was just a little experiment. It angered a lot of people.