Laughter is a beautiful thing. So, why ruin it by talking about it? Like cake and sex, it should never be talked about. The whole point of laughter is to shut people up, so we don’t have to hear them talk. It’s why couples go to comedy nights together, so they can laugh and have a good time without having to talk about bills, children and why last night they couldn’t get a parking space outside their own house. People don’t think before they laugh, they just laugh. After I have laughed, I don’t analyse why I laughed and try to repeat it. All I know is that I had a good howl, and I feel better. If we discuss laughter too much, we’ll kill the joy.
Laughing like mad can be a semi-religious spiritual experience. It can take you right out of your body; forget yourself and your problems. It can be total escapism from the mundane dreary monotony we call life, and more recently, lockdown. Never have I been more desperate for laughter than I have in this past year.
The last time I laughed was last night, by myself sitting on the settee watching the Harry and Meghan interview. It was all very sad and serious, then Meghan announced that the colour of her baby’s skin was questioned by someone in the royal family and I laughed out loud at Oprah’s response which was mouth wide open and then ‘What?’ then a pause then ‘Who is having that conversation?’ I laughed hysterically, shockingly, outrageously and unbelievably. I haven’t laughed that much since before the pandemic when I was in a live comedy show of two hundred people where I expected to laugh, that’s why everyone was there. That’s why laughter can never really be planned. It comes from nowhere. The unpredictability, the surprise, the shock, the relief. That’s what laughter is, that’s why it is so special and so rare and we will never appreciate it more than now, when we have been deprived of it like never before due to a pandemic coming from nowhere and ripping it from our consciousness.
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