I finally got round to picking up a copy of A.A.Gill’s new book, The Angry Island this weekend, and wanted to share this paragraph with you about the English sense of humo(u)r:

The English teeter on the edge of not being able to take anything seriously. The ability to be solemn or even appropriate, reflective or sad in public, is so uncomfortably embarrassing that they’re forced to giggle or snigger. I once asked an oncologist what was people’s most common reaction to being told they had cancer. After incomprehension and blank denial, he said, they make a joke. Quite often they go on making jokes till the morphine kicks them across the touchline. He’d worked in hospitals in the States. Americans, he said, went, “Oh my God, oh my God,” then cried, then prayed. They were then very, very serious and very, very well informed, until they got better or didn’t. What was odd was that the English thought they were coping well by never facing the seriousness of their condition or reacting appropriately. “Laughter is the best medicine,” they’d say with a smile. “By the way,” added the doctor, “just in case it happens to you, professional advice, it isn’t. A combination of chemotherapy and radiation is mostly the best medicine-after surgery.” Being positive helps, but telling jokes isn’t being positive, it’s denial, and that’s inappropriate. Laughing at mortality doesn’t make you look brave and nonchalant, it makes you look as if you haven’t understood the question.

I’ll try to bear all that in mind next time I’m tempted to laugh. The book is published by Simon & Schuster at $24. It has chapters on accents, class, apologies, and queuing, among other things. And largely explains why I was happy to leave the country of my birth. Enjoy!