When was the last time you laughed? I mean belly-laughed. If you can’t remember, it may be a sign you’re neglecting your health. According to new research and a recently published book, humour is a serious tool in our wellbeing arsenal.
Staying healthy isn’t just about diet and exercise; it’s about seeking out moments of humour, joy and connection. A good laugh is more than a light diversion – it can enhance both physical and mental health, spark creativity and help us survive life’s toughest moments.
US comedian and author Chris Duffy’s book Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected and Happy, published in January, reveals the health benefits of humour and provides a roadmap for more laughter. Duffy maintains that humour is not something we’re either born with or without, it’s something we have to actively practise and foster – like small talk if you’re an introvert or sleep hygiene if you’re an insomniac.
He suggests keeping a laughter diary as it helps us to revisit funny moments. In the same way that gratitude journals serve as daily reminders of positive experiences, laughter diaries can bring a little levity back into our lives at a time when the world can feel heavy.
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A curious mindset
Duffy also cites curiosity as an effective wellness tool. Broadcaster, author, comedian and wellness expert Dermot Whelan agrees. “Curiosity is a great place to start,” he says.
“There’s one phrase I find resets me and knocks me out of that moany-pants frame of mind and it’s: ‘Hmm, interesting’. What you’re doing is saying, okay, I’m open to possibility.”
Whelan says curiosity can shift us “from a danger frame of mind ... to a learning and growth mode”, opening up space for “playfulness and fun”. He maintains Irish people are naturally curious and adds that “the craic lives in curiosity”.
Belfast-born comedian Vittorio Angelone is sitting backstage at a gig in Middlesbrough in the UK with a fractured ankle when we speak. “I was playing rugby so it’s my own stupid fault,” he admits drily. The 29-year-old says embracing “a childlike wonderment and a wide-eyedness” – fractured ankle or not – encourages humour and laughter.
“I have the privilege of going on tour as a comedian, but I end up in some pretty weird places. I can arrive somewhere and think, God, this is a real dreary dump, or I can say, Wow, it’s amazing that people live here. I wonder what makes them tickle.”
The word ‘lemonading’ was coined by researchers at the University of Oregon in the US last year to describe this habit of reframing bitter situations as positive experiences. “I think Irish people are very good at this,” says Angelone, “and I think people from the North are particularly good at it because my parents’ generation grew up around some tough sh*t, so having an attitude of ‘If you don’t laugh you’ll cry’ is a good coping mechanism that we can all adopt.”
Vittorio says he recently met a 90-odd-year-old man who has kept a laughter diary for years. “He’s a very sweet old guy who lives down the road from my girlfriend’s parents in a wee cottage in the middle of nowhere in England. If there’s something in the newspaper he finds funny, he cuts it out and keeps it in his laughter book, or he’ll write down a funny item from the radio. Whenever he’s feeling down, he looks at his laughter book. He told me that his memory is so bad now, he laughs just as hard the second time around.”
Perhaps laughter is the secret to longevity. Research from the University of Oregon, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found that playfulness in adults is a vital but underappreciated resource for maintaining wellbeing, particularly during challenging times. Humour doesn’t change a situation, but it offers a momentary release.
Light in the dark
For poet Jan Brierton, these momentary releases are often found in monotony and by avoiding that state of autopilot we can all fall into. “I’m in the weeds at the moment, just with life, but I’ll still have a laugh listening to other people’s conversations on the bus,” she says. “You’ve got to find lightness in the dark,” she adds.
The 50-year-old recalls a moment at her uncle Bobby’s funeral in Mount Jerome Cemetery when, as the coffin retreated behind a curtain, a phone rang out at full volume with a spaghetti western ringtone. “I laughed out loud because Bobby would have loved that. Of all the theme tunes to cut to. Things can be painful and sad but amusing at the same time,” she says.
Brierton is quick to differentiate this kind of lightheartedness from toxic positivity. “I don’t believe there’s always a silver lining. Sometimes, it’s helpful to say, this is sh*t because some things are just bad.” Humour doesn’t say it’s good, but it lets you laugh at it for just a minute, she explains. The essence of Brierton’s poetry is finding fun in the humdrum.
One of her most popular poems, which she incorporates in every live show, is Meditation Cake: “I tried to meditate today. They say it clears the head. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. So I had some cake instead.” Whelan agrees. “The little doorways to playfulness and the stress relief we get from it are all around us if we’re willing to open our eyes a bit, and get off the news feed.”
For anyone who struggles to find the joy in small things, Whelan suggests connecting with the people who bring playfulness out in us.
“Old school buddies have that knack of bursting the bubble of seriousness that’s around us, of just sticking a pin in that self-importance or that harrumph attitude we may be stuck in. There are one or two I speak to on a weekly basis and I reach out to them at exactly those times when I feel there isn’t enough humour in my day or my week because I know that within seconds of a phone call, we’ll be putting on the same silly voices we did when we were 15 and laughing at each other. And that makes me feel lighter.”
‘Friendship simulator’
This kind of camaraderie is a big part of the appeal of Cold Wet Irish Summer, a comedy podcast in which co-hosts Thomas Lawrance, Mark Moloney and Ross O’Donoghue drive around Cork finding the fun in all kinds of people and places, be that a psychic in Cobh, a dinosaur exhibition at UCC or an ice rink in Cork City (where Moloney wound up with a fractured rib).
“Podcasts serve as a kind of friendship simulator,” explains Moloney, a part-time comedian who works in Stem research. “Maybe it’s because the audio quality of the podcast is poor, but the feedback we get is that listeners feel like they are in the car driving around with us.”
In Duffy’s book, he explains that saying yes to unusual things is a good way to go about introducing levity to your life. Moloney agrees, explaining that the lads’ last outing was to a wrestling event in Cork City. “That really wasn’t my cup of tea, but sometimes the humour is in the discomfort.”
For Whelan, anything that can knock off our stress response is worth trying – even a four-legged friend. “I’ve found that a dog is a great tool for playfulness, even though I was resistant in the early days,” he admits.
“Our stress response – that wonderfully helpful alarm – is ringing 24/7 these days because of news feeds, changes to our work environment, social media and a lot of anger in the world. It’s constantly primed for activation, but a dog can become an emotional Polyfilla that naturally plugs the difficult cracks that can appear in the mood of a household.” Although he admits with a laugh that it puts a lot of pressure on the family’s Jack Russell to be a constant source of amusement when he probably just wants to have a snooze.
Angelone’s advice is: “Just say something stupid every so often. I think people are too concerned with trying to be clever and insightful in conversation. But just say something idiotic. If you don’t know the answer to a question, just guess and then have a bit of craic about it,” he says.
“It’s quite an Irish thing,” he adds. “The point is not to make sense. If you want to get lofty about it, it’s Samuel Beckett, it’s James Joyce. It’s nonsense, but it’s good fun.”
