When you get a case of the giggles your symptoms include shortness of breath, soreness of stomach, streaming of eyes and a general sense of helplessness and goodwill.
The giggles were the key to the huge success of comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in the 60s and early 70s.
The sight of Moore pretending to drink from his pint in the Pete and Dud sketches - but actually silent with shoulder-shaking laughter after Cook had digressed from the script so outrageously there was no hope of getting it back on track - remains comedy gold.
It is this gold - although some of it tarnished as the rapport between Cook and Moore soured - that writers Nick Awde and Chris Bartlett alchemise in Pete and Dud: Come Again.
The nuggets - including an impromptu dissection of Aretha Franklin's Respect and a priceless recreation of a 70s recording where Cook graphically describes underwear being thrown up at Moore by old women as "a scene of unrelenting ghastliness" - were hilarious, and ably recreated by Mark Mansfield as Moore and Tom Goodman-Hill as Cook.
People in the audience who anticipated a belly-splitting performance were given tidbits and left hungry for more as the show delved deeply into the split between the pair, at times labouring the point.
But the show was conceived from Moore's point of view and was successful in portraying his love for Cook and also, to a degree, his envy of his partner's carefree and careless ways.
The writers have been brave bringing up the hard past when a pure, unrelenting re-creation of Pete and Dud's best comedy would have been a winning recipe. Sometimes people don't want to remember the bad stuff.
Pete and Dud: Come Again has, as far as I know, broken new ground in giggle research. Even an actor pretending to get the giggles is funny - though not as funny as the real thing.
When: to June 25
