Laughing Through the Pain: Using Humour as a Life Raft

Humour isn’t just a punchline—sometimes, it’s a parachute. Or a life raft. Or the only weapon you have when you’re up against things you don’t understand, can’t control and just want to survive.

When I was a boy at Knoll School for Boys in 1970s Hove, nothing was safe: not your lunch, school uniform, not your dignity, and definitely not your head (ask me about the clacker incident sometime). Every school day felt like being sent into a lion’s den wearing a sign that said “Pick On Me.” And yet—amid the horror—I found something that saved me: humour.

It came naturally, like a reflex. When you’re shoved face-first into a toilet bowl, you learn to find something funny about the smell of cleaning fluid or the echo of your own thoughts underwater. After a swastika was drawn on my forehead for the umpteenth time, I’d comment to the bully with the sharpie, “A Hammer and Sickle might be an upgrade.” My jokes weren’t always clever—but they were mine. They gave me control in moments where I had none.

It wasn’t just humour for the sake of distraction. It was survival. It was how I kept my sense of self when everything else was being stripped away. I cracked jokes to make others laugh—yes—but more often, I joked to remind myself that I was still there. Still human. Still Gary. Bent but nit broken. Even now, as I tell these stories through The Hate Game, people often ask: "How can you write about such dark things and still be funny?"

My answer is simple: Darkness is where humour shines the brightest.

Laughter doesn’t erase trauma, but it softens it. It lets you breathe around it. It gives you something to hold onto when the rest of the world feels like it’s crumbling.

My memoir dives into a journey filled with its share of misfortune, pain and tragedy. But along the way, it bursts with absurdities: teachers unexpectedly finding themselves locked in cupboards, friends sharing the wildest urban myths about sex education and attending religious lessons from a religion-hating atheist. After the fact, I laughed about getting caned just for asking an innocent question. Oh, and my mum’s quirky habits brought on some of the most delightful and looney-tune moments when the Ten Commandments were not just misinterpreted and misquoted but utterly bent beyond recognition! Let’s not forget those friends who tend to fart and make weird “boing” noises at the most awkward times and the bizarre school assemblies.

I remember facing the toughest student in school, friends reminding me that he would pulverise me and eat my liver afterwards. All I could do was laugh afterwards at how surreal life was.

Because even in the toughest times, life has this charming way of keeping things ridiculous. Finding humour amid the pain—even if it’s just a tiny spark—means the pain doesn’t have the final say.

So yes, I choose to laugh through the pain, and I warmly invite you to join me. Not because it’s all hilarious but because it’s all part of our beautiful reality.

And sometimes, the best way to fight darkness... is to shine a ridiculous little light of your own.