576This is the excellent Jeff Swedenhjelm, who has offered me a free place to stay in Los Angeles in the summer, which I'm happily taking him up on.

He wrote: "I heard this from my English teacher in Orchard Park High School, near Buffalo NY USA, the year he retired. He was a very serious teacher but a very silly man. A few years later I heard it from Mike Myers on a rerun of Inside The Actor's Studio, so that might be where my teacher had heard it first.

"Now living in Los Angeles, a starving writer, I've found that it's just as important to have an infinite sense of humor as it is to have an indomitable spirit. I joke about how little I have, and how that makes me impervious to politics, for the 'recession' has had no impact on me whatsoever.

"In fact, the struggle is helping me loose weight! I live comfortably in a totally sweet apartment with electricity, and what I get paid at work is pretty much just a joke. What recession? Ha ha!"