Please make me laugh!

Yesterday's Metro reviewed a novel called 'Instructions For Living Someone Else’s Life' with the following statement... "Some books make you snort involuntarily with laughter; others you have to put down for a proper belly laugh, wipe away tears and then return to. This is in the latter category"

It made me realise that I am positively gagging for a book that makes me laugh out loud.  The last one that gave me quite a few unexpected laughs was Catherin O'Flynne's excellent tragicomic novel, 'What Was Lost'. 

I remember laughing a lot when I was a teenager.  There were countless books and films that made my cheeks and stomach muscles ache.  One problem with getting older is that it becomes increasingly hard to find things new or surprising...  which I think are key components of humour.  As a result I seem to crave increasingly dark and edgy humour which is hard to satisfy outside the realms of live stand-up (or the fantabulous Chris Morris).  

But for true belly laughs, I think I have to admit that there is no substitute for the purely juvenile.   Ask yourself which book and/or film has given you the most all-time laughs.  A good film test is this... does it make you laugh out loud even when you are all alone?  I asked myself this question today and came to the rather sheepish conclusion that my funniest film is probably the 1979 classic 'The Jerk', which I re-watched by myself a few months ago and still snorted involuntarily through most of it. 

Truly funny books are trickier to pin down.  I seem to recall John O'Farrell making me laugh quite a bit, and when I was a teenager Tom Sharpe made me laugh til I cried.  (I wonder if I would find his novels even remotely funny if I read them again today?)

Obviously humour is a very personal thing...   but I really fancy a few laughs, so any personal recommendations will be warmly received.