Ten days ago I posted a piece about ‘The Healing Power of Laughter.’ I make no excuse for returning to this theme, for we can’t be reminded too often that laughter is a powerful therapy. This was the view of Dr Samuel Johnson, who said: ‘People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.’ For instance, we all know how to lose weight, but how many people make the life style changes needed to stay slim? Surveys show that from sunrise to sunset children chuckle about four hundred times. When they grow up life generally becomes more grim As a result of the hassle and bustle of the rat race adults manage no more than a paltry four guffaws per day. That deficiency needs to be countered if we’re to operate at our functional best. Laughing is known to be an antidote for stress, and it’s also a pain free way of losing weight. Researchers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee took a group of forty-five young adults and showed them clips of either comedy films or nature documentaries. The results revealed that the subjects showed a ten to twenty per cent increase in energy output when they were laughing than when they were resting or watching the emotionally neutral films. This suggests that chuckling for fifteen extra minutes a day could lead to a weight loss of between four and five pounds in a year. Another US study has shown that laughter improves the function of the blood vessels and heart, a hundred daily laughs being the cardiovascular equivalent of rowing for ten minutes.
Somehow we must start to see the funny side of life, filling our day with witty asides and amusing retorts. Few people realise that John Wesley, the great eighteenth century evangelist, had a very well developed sense of humour. One day he was walking down a particularly narrow alleyway when he was confronted by a pompous man who shouted: ‘Step aside, fellow! I never make way for fools’. ‘Oh,’ replied Wesley as he stepped to one side, ‘I always do’. Winston Churchill was also noted for his comical ripostes. On one occasion he was subject to a constant barrage of heckling by William Paling, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, who repeatedly called him a ‘dirty dog’ Finally Churchill could stand it no longer, and turning to the hapless heckler, peered over his glasses and in his famous slow and slurred delivery retorted: ‘I am grateful for the opportunity to remind the honourable member for Dewsbury what a dirty dog does to a paling.’ Harold Macmillan, his successor, was equally good at finding witty put downs. Once his opposite number, Harold Wilson, sought sympathy by saying that as a young working class lad he had no boots to wear when he went to school. With a wry smile the patrician Harold MacMillan immediately countered: ‘If Mr Wilson did not have boots to go to school that is because he was too big for them.’ In those days, politicians had a sense of humour which is so sadly lacking in today’s grim political scene. In 1962 MacMillan himself was facing a crisis. He looked in danger of losing his leadership position, and to maintain his control he organised a major shake-up of his Cabinet, a last ditch reshuffle which later became known as ‘the night of the long knives’. The young Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe created hoots of laughter the following day when he came out with the sardonic riposte: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life.’
Humour of that kind is life enhancing, and like any other skill can be developed by regular practice. Dorothy Parker, the American columnist, was a master of this art. Once she sent a congratulatory telegram to a friend who’d just given birth ‘Dear Mary, we all knew you had it in you.’ And when reviewing a book her dismissive comment was: ‘This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force’. Wit like this deserves to be shared. Laughter is contagious: be a carrier.
