Laugh, and the whole world just stares at you

I wish I were in control of my emotions. Or, indeed, of anything else.

I wish I were in control of my emotions. Or, indeed, of anything else.

"Back with partially sighted Skippy," the unctuous lady on the box said. "And let's see how he and Mandy are getting on."

You never get any warning of it, no tremor of dread. It just happens, and, basically, your life might as well be at an end. This time, it was partially sighted Skippy that did it. I was doing quite well, and then a flea-ridden blind donkey on a BBC 1 tragic-pet spectacular came along, and I was uncontrollable with laughter on the floor.

After about an hour of hopeless solitary hilarity - "She said... I mean... partially... partially... I mean... the donkey... the donkey..." I came round, to see myself being regarded with a certain tight-lipped politeness. It was a quiet Wednesday evening at home; an acquaintance who lives round the corner had dropped in for a drink and asked if I minded having BBC's "Poor Darling Animals We All Love So Much", or something, on. Politeness sustained me for a good seven minutes, but then partially sighted Skippy turned up, and I was helpless.

The French have a phrase for it - fou rire. It is a sort of sudden madness, out of the control of your best intentions. An actor can fake tears easily; laughter, on the other hand, is a nightmare to produce spontaneously. Conversely, in ordinary life, it isn't hard to grit your teeth and put on a brave face at low points. Laughter can't always be stopped. It starts quicker and won't be controlled. After the initial, terrifying curve, nothing will bring you down to earth; Myra Hindley, Dale Winton, Auschwitz seem incredibly funny. The only sobering thought in such circumstances, I've found, is to envisage very complicated sexual positions with great intensity.

The worst element of it, always, is the solitude. If friends are people with whom you share a sense of humour, then there's something peculiarly awful about people who just don't see why something is funny.

I remember once going out for a publisher's dinner with Andrew Sullivan, the American commentator on Aids, and at the end of the dinner, everyone else asked for decaff coffee. The waiter came to me, and I said, "No, I'll have the full-fat version." "Excuse me?" the waiter said. "Our coffee is fat-free." "No," I said, "I was making a joke, but I promise not to do it again." The waiter went, and I pulled a face. "I think", one of the Americans said politely, "our waiter did not quite understand that your intention was to banter with him. But I wonder if you would be so kind as to explain your joke again, for the benefit of the table." And then it struck: hopeless, insulting, solitary hilarity.

I must say, a real bout of uncontrollable laughter in an inappropriate place always turns out to be a much more awful memory than, say, the memory of misery.

I couldn't tell you where and when I've cried, but the moments I couldn't stop laughing are horribly etched on my memory. God, the day we went to see the terrible Merchant-Ivory film Washington Square, and there was nobody in the auditorium but the two of us and poor Craig Raine, two rows in front. That poor lady who was reading in so sincere a voice at the Poetry Society about her juvenile abortion. The dreadful day when my beloved, serious tutor at Oxford decided to treat us to an impromptu tour d'horizon of an Italian Renaissance epic, and after 10 minutes, I was in real, shameful physical pain.

The worst thing about fou rire is that it always strikes at something you like to think you take seriously. It always comes up when you're in an inescapable situation and are obliged to sit and listen to something. The very worst fit I remember struck when I was working for the House of Commons, and some smart boy from the City came to give evidence to a select committee. With tragic obviousness, he nipped out just before the awful ordeal and when he came back, puffed up and beaming, had blatantly just snorted a gigantic line of cocaine.

As the session went on, and his rattling confidence started to give way to ticks and sniffs and paranoid little glances from one end of the committee to another, there was nothing I could do but bury my tearful, hooting face in a pile of papers and just let my shoulders shake like Edward Heath. The funniest thing was that none of the MPs seemed to think there was anything wrong. If a shared joke is the best basis for friendship, there's nothing that sharpens laughter like the knowledge that, next to you, there's some more grown-up person who thinks there's nothing to laugh at here, nothing at all.

I surfaced from my choking fit and focused seriously on the television. "And the bond between Mandy and Skippy is just getting stronger and stronger," the lady said. And I thought I was going to die.

hensherp@dircon.co.uk