What it means
A figure of fun is the person people keep lightly taking the piss out of, not usually with real malice, more because they come off a bit daft, eccentric, or unintentionally funny. It's softer than laughing stock and often lands on the office oddball, the family uncle, or anyone who somehow becomes the room's ongoing chuckle magnet.
Usage examples
"With his loud ties and terrible puns, he is a bit of a figure of fun around the office."
"Poor Brian became a bit of a figure of fun after the karaoke night, but he takes it all in good humour."
"Uncle Trev has been a figure of fun at every family wedding since the eighties, he wears the same paisley waistcoat and tells the same dodgy magic trick to anyone who has not heard it yet."
"My old geography teacher was a proper figure of fun, he insisted we all called him Mister Bean, drove a battered Skoda and somehow got us all through the GCSE in one piece."
"Once he turned up to the pub quiz in a full waistcoat and called himself the mastermind, he was a figure of fun for weeks."
Where it comes from
This one’s old-school British. It started in 18th and 19th century theatre for a comic character built to get laughs from the crowd. Later it hopped off the stage and into everyday English, where it came to mean a real person people chuckle at or gently mock, usually without full-on nastiness.
