They crack jokes, then they crack up

WE LEARNED this week that top comedian Dudley Moore is depressed, debilitated by strokes and waiting to die. He has reportedly told friends that he has nothing left to live for.

For those brought up on "Pete and Dud" sketches, it's hard to imagine the small one in the flat cap and scarf saying anything as depressingly banal as: "I'm waiting to die." Not unless he was parodying BBC senior management.

He's not supposed to get serious and depressed like the rest of us. He is meant to joke at adversity, laugh in the face of death, and crack one- liners right up to the end, in the tradition of people like WC Fields, who managed to continue his jokes after death with the tombstone inscription: "On the whole I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

Comedians have a propensity to depression. In fact, so many suffer from it, that if it came with spots and a cough it would be classed as an occupational disease. If you start compiling a list of funny men who have suffered from intolerable black moods, you end up with a list of the best comics - Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Peter Cook, Woody Allen, Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Kenneth Williams, Mike Yarwood, Sean Hughes and Charlie Chaplin.

Tony Slattery had a nervous breakdown which forced him to stop working for two years. "It was like the black dog got you, gave you a little shake, but then let you go. But this wasn't like that. The black dog got me in its jaws and just hung on for two years," he told The Independent's Deborah Ross.

One of Peter Cook's friends has said: "Peter went through hell to make us all laugh. He'd drink, take pills, rant and rage, then collapse in floods of tears.'' Another friend said: "Peter was a hilarious man whose wild, irreverent humour paved the way for shows like Monty Python, Have I Got News for You? and Not The Nine O'Clock News. But there was a different side to him. In order to make us all laugh, he went through hell at home."

Dudley Moore, like his former partner in comedy Peter Cook, took refuge in drugs and alcohol, and has suffered from a series of strokes. His ex- wife says he spends an enormous amount of money on narcotics.

Making people laugh has a high price. Charlie Chaplin wrote that it took "sheer perseverance to the point of madness". Chaplin's humour was a technique for imposing order on an unhappy and chaotic life. It was said his jokes were forged in anger and self-pity. Like Peter Cook, Chaplin had a split personality. Director Robert Florey said: "One moment he was the amiable Charlie: the cajoler and charmer who wants to please, amuse and seduce. The next he was Mr Chaplin, the tyrannical, wounding, authoritarian, mean, despotic man imbued with himself."

Ironically, comedians often do not value their ability to make people laugh and they often crave approval for a more serious side. Hancock wanted to play Shakespeare, Kenneth Williams wanted to stop messing about and do serious acting too. Dudley Moore, too, has his piano playing, but however good a musician he is, he will always be remembered for his jokes.

Paul Merton, who was once diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression, has described how he collected jokes to tell at his birthday parties: "I remember at the age of eight making all these children laugh at my birthday party. And then thinking: I've got to do it again when I am nine. I've got to do it when I'm 167. You see, I felt the pressure even then," he says.

According to Professor Cary Cooper of Manchester University, it is the desire to feel wanted that is the driving force behind comedians. "They are people who have a strong need to be liked, which comes from something negative in their childhood which has given them a poor self image," he says. The way they compensate for that is by making others laugh. It makes them feel good about who they are," he says.

"Once the crowd, the audience who like them are gone, comedians are back with themselves. It is when they stop performing that it hits them. If you are constantly on show, constantly entertaining, constantly making people laugh, you are not dealing with something that may be troubling you. While you are cracking jokes, you may be cracking up."

One of the problems for comedians is, that unlike actors, they cannot hide behind the parts they play. They are expected to be funny 24 hours a day.

When Stephen Fry went walkabout after he abandoned the West End play Cell Mates, he said he felt a need to be among strangers.

"I had always been cynical about the clown with the tear; that all funny people are melancholy. I used to take pride in thinking one could snap out of it, that we weren't all Tony Hancocks. Laughter can help other people, but not the laughter-give."

Dr Raj Persaud, a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley hospital in south London, says that the young comedian is often drawn to the job because of the reaction they get.

"One of the theories is that if you look into the background of comedians, you can see that from an early age they found that being funny was useful and it was often because they were outsiders of some kind. It is one way to integrate into a group.

"The problem for the comedian is that if you find that being funny has been your defence mechanism, you are always going to rely on it so there is a terrible pressure to be funny even when you are not on stage. The sad thing is that it may be comedians never learn that they don't have to be funny to be acceptable to other people."