Seeing the funny side in the life of Brian

HEARD the one about the talking dog?

No? You can bet Brian Cowen hasn’t either and that may be partly why he is the very opposite of his predecessor, the Teflon Taoiseach.

Bertie Ahern was always good for a laugh and managed to worm his way out of most scrapes and, according to the world’s leading authority on humour, Mr Cowen should do the same.

Advising the Taoiseach to see the funny side of things is Dr William Fry, psychiatrist, humorist and all-round man of mirth who is in Ireland to deliver a lecture on laughter today at University College Cork.

Dr Fry, 85, suggests political leaders like the Taoiseach should laugh in the face of adversity and giggle their way to good fortune.

“It’s the universal solvent,” says Dr Fry, professor emeritus of the Stanford University School of Medicine in the US. “A good dose of mirthful laughter will dissolve almost any difficult situation. It may not get rid of the problem entirely but it will certainly help to make it more manageable.”

Dr Fry believes a regular dose of laughter will make everyone healthier and cure illness and could even help to trim the Taoiseach’s ample waistline. “When you consider the energy involved to produce a belly laugh, it is absolutely true that calorific consumption takes place.”

Dr Fry’s books include Sweet Madness, Make ’Em Laugh, Advances in Humour and Psychotherapy, and Humour and Wellness in Clinical Intervention.

He is also a collector of jokes, something he shares with Des McHale, UCC’s professor of mathematics, who invited him to Cork.

But not every joke makes him laugh. “It depends on the quality of the joke, There is a lot of dumb humour out there. Parrot jokes are my favourite at the moment. I went through a phase of pearly gate jokes and collected quite a few but I’ve moved on.”

As for the talking dog joke, Dr Fry has been telling that one with great success for years — and he has the laughter lines to prove it.

* Dr Fry will deliver the HJ and Barbara Cummings Annual Public Lecture on Humour at UCC at 4pm today in Boole II Lecture Theatre.

* PS: If you want to know the talking dog joke, don’t miss Saturday’s Irish Examiner — we’ll be including it as part of an interview with Dr Fry.