Here’s the secret of humour. But don’t tell the Germans.

V.S. Naipaul, that clever and often wise man, once laid down: ‘One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.’ Well, where’s the comedy now? There is certainly plenty of hysteria. Old Theodore Roosevelt used to say: ‘Men are seldom more unreasonable than when they lose their money. They do not seek to apportion blame by any rational process but, like a wounded snake, strike out against what is most prominent in their line of vision.’ I notice that the OED, as a rule politically correct, thinks hysteria is chiefly female: ‘Women being much more liable than men to this disorder, it was originally thought to be due to a disturbance of the uterus… Former names for the disease were vapours and hysteric passion.’ Women certainly laugh more than men, more frequently too, a form of anti-hysteria therapy Nancy Mitford called ‘shrieks’.

We first hear of it in Chapter 18 of the Book of Genesis, one of my favourite biblical scenes, taking place outside and within Abraham’s tent.