You Gotta Laugh

The best heckle I’ve ever heard of happened at the Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night. Ken Dodd is on stage and he’s killing it. It’s a notoriously tough gig. There’s a brief lull between the laughter and before Dodd delivers the next joke, a voice from the crowd shouts, ‘It’s all very funny if you like laughing.’

When we’re kids, we laugh all day long. At school we laugh and at university we laugh, but as soon as we start to work, we only laugh evenings and weekends, which is not enough to be happy. We’re all born funny and growing up ruins us.

Ever wondered why you like to laugh? Of course not, it would be weird if you had. No matter. I’ll tell you why you like laughing: laughing does a lot. It pretty much does everything that having sex does but without anyone getting an STI, although laughter can be infectious. And much like having sex, you can do it alone if you want, but it’s more fun in a group and best with a professional.

Being credible and serious is an act. We’re putting on a show for others and for ourselves. But that doesn’t mean that’s all we are. That’s a good thing to know. It means we can put on other, more fun, shows.

Let’s start laughing again, please. You can just decide to do it. You can choose to laugh at any time, you just have to see the opportunities. As we just saw, once you change the way you look at the world, the world will actively change the way it looks back at you. It’s fucking magical. Physicists call it ‘complementarity’ because they’re smarter than us, I guess. It’s a fancy word that means the way you look at things actually changes those things. And it means you can change the world – at least for you.

Laughter is about a million years older than language. It’s been with us from the jump, it’s evolved with us. Imagine one of our ancient ancestors casually passing by a bush. He hears something rustling inside and freezes. Maybe it’s a tiger? But then a small bird hops out. He laughs, and laughing relaxes him and it signals to the rest of his tribe to go ahead and relax too. We still signal to one another through laughter. Laughter means it’s okay. Laughter helps us to connect with one another. It’s part of our culture. You were born to laugh.

All Comedians are Drug Dealers

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
— George Bernard Shaw

I’m a drug dealer. I deal in endorphins, the same stuff that makes cocaine so very moreish. And I’m not just dealing to a few close friends; I’m really involved. To make matters worse, I’ve broken the first rule of dealing, I’m also a user. I’ve got high on my own supply. I’m hopelessly addicted to the drug I push.

The genius move, my customers already have the drug on them, they just need me to tease it out. Of course, I won’t go to jail, they’ll never catch me. There’s no smuggling involved, no gangland hits and no one ever ODs. (I guess an asthmatic could feasibly pass out and die at one of my shows – hang on, have I just created the perfect murder? Yep, I have.)

In Praise of Drugs

Laughter is good for you. It increases blood flow and muscle relaxation and it reduces the arterial wall stiffness associated with cardiovascular disease.

Humour uses different parts of your brain at the same time. That’s why people think you’re more intelligent when you make jokes: you are.

If you have a normal emotional response, it is confined to specific areas of your brain. But laughter is different; laughter produces a circuit that runs through a whole bunch of regions. Here we go: it starts in the left side of the cortex, where words and the structure of the joke is analysed. Then it goes to the frontal lobe and it picks up social and emotional responses and then it scoots over to the right hemisphere for the intellectual analysis required (when you ‘get’ the joke). Then you push it back to the occipital lobe to process the visual signals (you visualise the joke), right before you stimulate the motor section to get the physical response to the joke (you laugh).

Also, I’m assuming that at some point it hits your funny bone. You do all of that in two-fifths of a second. Damn. I told you, super smart.

‘Fight or flight’ are your ‘basic bitch’ responses. Laughter suppresses cortisol and epinephrine, our fight or flight hormones, so you can actually deal with shit.

Laughter is intimate, it’s physical. We vibrate, it involves the whole of you. You cannot laugh without moving your body. By laughing, you activate your vagus nerve and the vagus nerve will tell your nervous system it can relax, which in turn will tell your gut to go ahead and digest your food and later, you can sleep better (so, despite what you’ve heard, what happens in the vagus nerve does not stay in the vagus nerve).

When we laugh, our brains release dopamine, which makes us happy and lets us bond, along with oxytocin, which makes us more trusting. You believe me when I say that, right?

If there was a pill you could take that would do what laughter does, you’d take it, wouldn’t you? Of course you would, there is no downside.

The problem with drugs is the impurities and processing. It’s a filthy business, and you want a nice clean high. Where do you get that? Well, from your own central nervous system. Laughter is a ridiculously wholesome way to get lit.

‘Never complain, never explain.’

Jimmy