THE LAUGHTER MAKERS

When one sets them against the Sun one may see their bodies' whole anatomy.
Arnold Small, Of Size And Certainty

Of all Tom Thumb's impersonations
one of the most successful was of Napoleon,
whom he played once before the Duke of Wellington.
The music of laughter,
the Iron Duke whispered to a companion,
warms the heart of a miserable man like the golden Sun,
and lifts the spirits of a happy man clear to Heaven.

When John Wesley spoke of his heart having been "strangely warmed",
he is said to have just been told the story about the King,
the squalor of the Poor School, and the Tory.
It changed his life,
and, though every life is capable of change, all some men
want to change is their wife.

The theory that Darwin's Origin of Species
had its own origins in a quip
about a couple of earthworms out on a blind date
is to state in irreverent terms
nothing less than how important even a little joke is.

Skilled funsters never forget
that the element of surprise
is what best brings tears to the eyes:

Cardinal Richelieu kisses a little girl on the mouth
and she turns into a frog.
Bob Hope drops into South Vietnam by parachute
and the War grinds to a halt while he plays a round of golf,
then it starts up again - with a smile.
Queen Elizabeth the Second shakes the hand of the American Ambassador
and her arm falls off. But it's a false one!
Never before have two countries shared such fun!

Sometimes we don't know whether to laugh or cry:
a man stepping back off a cliff while taking a photograph;
a fat woman on a bike;
an ice skater tumbling on the ice;
a cathedral of matchsticks destroyed by a draught.
The wages of sin, and the wages of a sixteen year old trainee hairdresser.
The kind of music one hears on the way to the bank
with a blank mind.

At Hazlitt's marriage, Lamb was seen, in his own words,
like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony.
Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

Even in laughter the heart is full of sorrow,
and the fate of mirth today is a heaviness tomorrow.

The funny film actor W.C. Fields hired a dwarf
to keep his martini glass filled, and if the dwarf went to sleep on the job
he'd hide the little man's false teeth as a punishment.

Caligula loved a nightmare,
beneath whose weight the Emperor sought in vain the incarnation
of infernal mirth in pain.

And it's not very common knowledge that Attila the Hun,
four feet six in his socks,
only knew one humorous story,
the one about the woman who married a midget and,
the day she walked out, perched him up on the mantelpiece. He couldn't get down
and had to shout for help,
but he was only little and only had a little shout.
And this in a land where the mantelpiece was unknown:
no wonder very few people laughed when he told it.

Martin Stannard