28 October 2021

Re-establishing Laughter

Well done, Brighton girls.

By John Watson

Of all the disgraceful news in Monday’s edition of The Times the most outrageous came from Brighton Girls, a progressive independent school which is introducing laughter therapy sessions to help counteract the depressing effect of lockdown on its pupils. What is worse is that the lessons are expected to be enjoyable. Laughter, enjoyment, good fellowship? Surely these are pleasures from earlier in the century before we realised that the only true virtues are correctness, sneering and the upholding of social standards.

In the Harry Potter books, the Dementors are described as “soulless creatures… among the foulest beings on Earth” but the worst thing about them is that they gradually deprive human minds of happiness and intelligence. Laughter has no place in Azkaban. It has no place among the politically correct in modern Britain. Thank goodness it survives at Brighton Girls.

The bizarre climate in which someone who uses the wrong words or is shown to have thought the wrong thought is automatically castigated and possibly destroyed has had a baleful effect on laughter and cheerfulness. It was once the case that the best lectures were those given by the most relaxed lecturers, men and women whose concentration was both on imparting knowledge and on keeping the audience amused. Occasionally they would slip over some line or other but, in the absence of malice, nobody minded much. Shoulders were shrugged; something could be forgiven to those who sought to amuse. Comedians too were allowed great latitude – a tradition going back to mediaeval times when the jester had licence to mock the king. None of that now. Everyone who lectures, writes, broadcasts or draws a cartoon has to keep a careful eye on what they say. Stray from the path of purity or make an inappropriate joke and you are finished. Little wonder that what is produced is much less amusing.

Fortunately we are unlikely to have to put up with all this nonsense much longer. That is not down to Brighton Girls but to the fact that fads of this sort contain the seeds of their own destruction. Gradually the public lose patience, failure to follow the rules is increasingly ignored (is it “he, she, or they”? And anyway who the hell cares?) and those high priests of correctness whose only distinction is the freedom with which they criticise others begin to panic, becoming more and more extreme, flying round in ever decreasing circles and ultimately disappearing up their own rectums and thus becoming extinct like the oozlum bird of folk history.

Well, I can only say that I hope it’s like that because the alternative is truly awful.  A humourless society from which fun and good fellowship are gradually drained. Another land in which irony is not understood. A godless triumph of northern piety over southern jollity. There are lands like that, plenty of them, and I suppose that that way of living suits the local population. But to make Britain so would be to throw away what makes it great. A tolerant, rather laid back and easy-going country which prefers to laugh and celebrate than to carp and criticise. That is the country which most of us wish to live in and laughter is the tool we can use to make sure we do so. That is not just through laughter lessons and independent schools but by mocking and laughing at those who have tried to use political correctness as a way of controlling society. Still, we must not take it too far. These are largely inadequate people who have clawed at the only way they can think of to give themselves an identity. They need to be brought back into line with companionship and tolerance. After all, laughter, companionship and tolerance are sister virtues. You cannot have one of them without the others.

Tile photo:Antonino Visalli on Unsplash