DEAD FUNNY

Tragedy had struck the Winshaws twice before. The first: holidaying in Florida 1974, when an alligator jumped up onto the launch. Young Harden Winshaw was so alarmed he bit off his own tongue. The attending paramedic said he'd never seen so much blood. The second: when the council was infiltrated by fascists.

In the event of the failure of his military putsch, hardworking local councillor Primo De Rivera had decided to stand. His electioneering pamphlet glossed over his abortive coup:

'I want to continue working with my Falange Party cadres to help local people. Primo is campaigning to get Stagecoach to use all the Park & Ride stops in the village on its Sunday service. He also wants action to tackle the problems of littering in Unimportington.'

Harden's tongue was never re-grafted on. The Falangists were eventually driven out, but not before a local revolution, betrayed by the communists and defeated by the combined forces of capital and liberalism, lead inevitably to a sustained period of totalitarianism. It was during these years of municipal fascism that the Winshaws lost their sense of humour, jointly and irretrievably.

Rheumatism, HRT, dementia, bad backs, prostate glands, gout, thyrroids, haemorroids, low libido and kidney stones they had anticipated, but a loss of an appreciation of the comedy of the absurd was unexpected. The sophisticated smile of satire just didn't do it for them anymore.

They tried everthing. Back-to-back Goons, Cambridge Footlights mafia, early Billy Connolly, Spanish Fly, tickling, tantric massage, The Beano, Dick Van Dyke's accent in Mary Poppins, Poppers, Karl Popper, Karl Marx, Groucho Marx, General Franco's funny strides, feathers, Catholicism, street theatre, getting plastered, Frankie Howard: not a titter.

Then, one afternoon Mrs Winshaw was having a stimulating conversation about local policing with Community Beat Officer Max Bylaws. He was outlining five steps to a safer Britain. He had just got up to number 5 ('Sentences should mean what they say. Life should mean life.') when his interlocutor attempted to break wind. She had intended to contain the fart and had gone for a slow lady-like release. This however ended in failure. And Mrs W. crapped her draws.

She didn't find this faintly fun. Mr. Winshaw on the other hand did. A minor gurglette at first, it struggled to reach incipient gigglng, edging into half-blown belly-laughter, before a snot-inducing rip-snorting howl erupted from the volcano of his nose and mouth, at which point he keeled over and died.

His widow's last instruction to the funeral directors was 'take that ridiculous smirk off his face.'