From D’oh! to Doha

YOU might have noticed that so grim are things in this country — with what few assets we have left now well and truly frozen — that it actually took the news of a man’s death this week to raise a genuine chuckle.

Run of the mill comedians live in mortal dread of dying on stage but the true immortals won’t even let the Grim Reaper himself have the last laugh. So let’s have a big, hearty posthumous pie in the face for Leslie Nielsen, whose passing gave rise to the welcome phenomenon whereby, for once, the nightly news on telly — or ‘Doomwatch’, as it’s now officially known in our house — had us hooting with mirth rather than contemplating the pistol and the bottle of hooch, as they reprised some of the great man’s greatest hits.

“This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.”