Griselda Mussett can't stop laughing at really silly jokes - the older the better. Roger McGough sets her off ..
Griselda emailed Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Truths one Saturday morning to say that someone on the programme had just said something that kicked the laughing glands into gear ... she was having what her children call a 'Mum's Simple Moment'. Her sister Sheila is just as bad ... as children they'd been known as the Giggly-goglies.
Griselda explains, "I discovered as I hit the menopause, jokes that knew really well, suddenly made me laugh so much, I couldn't stop. The pleasure was knowing them already and with children around, they like to go through the repertoire. Although they do say, 'Oh God! you're so simple Mum!'."
Sometimes laughter within families is distrusted or seem as subversive, but Griselda, Sheila and their two other siblings were positively encouraged to laugh in their home. Griselda believes that the secret object of most men is to make women laugh. She expands on her Men & Humour theory, "It's a melting of the defences - what men try and do is carry on until they get a laugh and if it's a tense situation, the tension drops."
Griselda's husband does make her laugh, "But he doesn't even know he does it. He does it all the time, and I don't know if he knows he does it!" Sheila chips in, "My husband does it too," she says Sheila, trying not to laugh at the recollection, "He's a golfer - he spends all his time thinking about golf - the other day I heard him walking down the hall saying to himself, 'Ball flying through the air, mmm chukka mmm chukka…' He was obviously visualising a golf ball going up and through the air and pitching onto a green somewhere - he probably wasn't even aware he was doing it ..."
"An uncle had all these sayings," says Griselda, expanding the theme, "He used to say, 'It's the modern way!', or if someone was crossing the road whilst he was driving, he'd say, 'Come along, trotty-trews!' and if he was feeling particularly lordly, he'd say, 'Out of the way you peasants!' They used to have terrible Sunday lunches in that family - insults being hurled about - visitors used to come and leave early with white faces .. they couldn't cope with it really.." And as if to contradict the awfulnes, both Griselda and Sheila bubble into laughter at the memory of their uncle.
Giselda believes humour comes from a sense of the bizarre and eccentric, which you need to express in some way. Laughter is often the way to do it.
Rounding off the interview nicely, Roger drops in a final, devastating question, "What is the defintion of an archaeologist?"
Giggles
"A man who's career is in ruins"
(Exeunt Griselda, Sheila and Roger - cackling)
