This paper debates the link between lexical priming and humour. As incongruity, unpredictability and ambiguity are often associated with humour theory, this paper examines the potential that many jokes or unintentional humour rely on the overruling of lexical priming. Employing the Cobuild Bank of English to explore priming employing collocational statistics, the paper assays eight jokes/humorous utterances to show and test this possibility. While in many cases humour can be clarified by cancelling priming, some interesting exceptions are debated. Finally, an effort is made to put the idea of cancelling lexical priming in the context of the theory of humour as liberation.