HUMOUR

My wife, May, was laughing loudly and called me to look at a piece - Learn Chinese in Five Minutes - our daughter, Joan, has emailed. I had earlier had some good laughs over the same piece on our elder daughter, Ann's, tweet. I am glad I married a woman who really has a chuckling sense of humour and have daughters who appreciates the good laughs.

I remember when I was a teenager, I immensely enjoyed the humour and wit in "Life with Bliss", aired over the Rediffusion. Back then, besides radio, Rediffusion, was somewhat ubiquitous. It is a wired system on which you listened to programmes through a loudspeaker. The rest of my brothers and sisters didn't like the programme. On another occasion I was in a cinema for Alfred Hitchcock's, "Trouble with Harry". I was the only one among 4 in there who laughed aloud at the funny situations. Today I enjoy shows like "Seinfeld" and "Two and a Half Men". Having a good laugh lightens up my spirit, and worry tends to drip away, at least temporarily.

Why humour? It seems every human being has a sense of humour. It is only a matter of degree. Even the lips of people with perpetually dour outlook will twitch when a spot-on funny bone strikes them. Whether you are tickled depends on your cultural background, maturity, intelligence, level of education and context. A sense of humour seems to be a sort of evolutionary trait that allows human to recognise out-of-place patterns in situations that could signify danger and the responses to them help build group cohesion. Research is continuing.

In the meantime, my family and I will continue to enjoy "The Black Adder", "The Vicar of Dibley", Jim Carey, Jimmy Kimmel and the likes, and I may also revisit P.G. Wodehouse, especially Jeeves.

Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children.