Thou shalt not laugh whilst travelling on the tube

In the often mind-numbing drudgery of commuting, one of the more unexpected things one finds oneself doing is bursting out laughing in a tightly-packed tube carriage during the morning rush hour. People look at you first with annoyance and then with a degree of concern, as if to suggest that they think the rat race may just have got to you. Clearly you have lost the plot, yet another victim of the modern condition who's buckling under the pressure of the City. They put railings at the top of the Monument to stop people like you throwing yourself to your death, you know. People stiffen, clutch at their possessions as if any second the chortling psychopath they perceive you to be is going to rob you (or worse). Laughter, at least the last time I checked, is a natural human behaviour. Clearly this is not the case on public transport. One should be seen and not heard, it would appear.

But laugh out loud is exactly what I did several mornings ago upon chancing upon a short letter in this morning's Metro, the free paper for commuters, each copy circulating between God knows how many travellers on an average morning - you wouldn't pick a paper out of the bin (unless you were homeless which is an entirely different scenario), but it is socially acceptable to retrieve a copy of the Metro from the grubby floor of a tube train. It is not socially acceptable to laugh, however. Double standards, anyone?

The letter was written by Steve Ainger, and concerned the title of The Darkness' last effort, One Way Ticket To Hell And Back. Steve's sharp-witted comment suggested that this in fact meant they needed to purchase a return, not a single. It couldn't have been more than twenty words, but was so precise and so instant that I almost fell off my seat laughing. As it happened I didn't have a seat, so more accurately I almost fell over. Well, in fact I wouldn't haven fallen anywhere so sardine-packed was I on said morning, but I think you get the gist.

As it happens, I know Steve, and worked with him for nearly three years. Steve is perhaps the funniest chap I've ever had the good fortune to work with. He and I also shared a love for the least celebrated nineties indie bands and all things Morrissey, and his dry office rhetoric was both infuriating and infectious. One of Steve's methods of passing time in the office was to play a game of verbal 'either / or' with his immediate colleagues - he'd find two totally unrelated things connected only loosely by alliteration, and ask his colleagues which they would prefer. Simple, funny and invariably straight out of left field, normally delivered just when the office had quietened down and was earnestly beavering away. The same is also true of his regular Metro letters, which are usually shoe-horned in between serious gripes and comments from the public and catch you completely off-guard; his curt little observations on culture, politics and life in general are something of a regular feature in the letters pages, and are always guaranteed to make you guffaw quite unexpectedly.

Steve has also dabbled in stand-up comedy at open-mic nights, which to my chagrin I have yet to experience. But, from what I know of Steve, and if his Metro letters are anything to go by, his wry brand of comedic wit and observation would go down a storm, and I believe he has a number of Michael Stipe gags in his repertoire. If things don’t work out for Steve in PR then I think he’ll have plenty of options for alternative careers.

In his own inimitable – but subtle – manner through his series of regular Metro letters, Steve has become part of the fabric of a commuter's life, as much as, say, rainy Monday mornings, delayed trains and the Waterloo & City Line being closed, only in a way guaranteed to make you smile rather than wince in pain. Long may it continue.