I WAS reminded how wonderful laughter can be a few days ago.

Having a pub lunch with friends - one of whom works for Specsavers - I recalled experiencing the following incident earlier in the year…

There are some things in life one simply could not make up: this is one such.

From the hostelry’s small toilet cubicle where I sat I heard a door banging the distance, then an urgent fumbling for the door into the ladies’ loo. A person stumbled in shrieking and moaning. A tap was turned on followed by much splashing and more moaning.

Unable to tell whether the person was laughing or crying I opened the door of the cubicle cautiously and peeped out…

A line of wash hand basins faced me with a long mirror over them, where stood a woman washing her hands furiously.

Our eyes met in the mirror. “Are you OK? I’m not sure whether you’re laughing or crying?” I asked… She stared at me wildly, shrieked some more, looked like she was going to say something, then reverted to more abject moaning followed by hysterical laughter.

“Must be quite a story?” I coaxed.

Whatever story I expected it surely wasn’t what had transpired - which I shall laugh about for years to come.

Between gasps for breath, and splashing her hands under water with dollops of liquid hand wash over them she confessed…“Not wearing my specs. Can’t see a thing. Went to the loo. Searched to wash my hands. Thought it was a fancy new basin… (more moaning and suppression of laughter) but (voice going up an octave word by word) it wasn’t… it was a fancy urinal…” at which point the stranger exploded into more hysteria with which I joined in over those sinks for several more minutes.

It will now have become clear why I re-told this story to my pal from Specsavers with a “got an advert idea for your lot as good as the one about the vet trying to put a line into the furry hat with the cat watching him” (currently my husband’s favourite. He laughs every time it comes on).

What is less clear is why we laugh at some things and not others… or, in The Donald’s case, why he doesn’t laugh at all.

Former FBI director James Comey observed of Trump on CNN that “I’ve never seen him laugh. Not in public, not in private.” In fact Comey disclosed he’s developed something of an obsession over Trump’s lack of mirth.

Contrast this with former First Lady Michelle Obama who has talked publicly on using humour to get people’s attention: “What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way.

“My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.”

Tina Fey (American comedienne) maintains: “You can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at.”

She didn’t indicate which end of the smart-scale people are who don’t laugh… Any ideas?

Toilet humour?! PA Photo/thinkstockphotos