Some years ago when I was on a coach holiday to Austria, a fellow passenger's amusing hospital tales whiled away time on the German autobahn.

A patient in the next bed, for instance, given a large bottle by a nurse for a urine sample, began guzzling water furiously. When quizzed, it emerged he mistakenly believed he had to fill it right up. Patients were in stitches, some literally.

"In hospitals," said my friend, "you have to laugh."

In the past decade, after making so many hospital trips I considered moving to Weston, I've come to appreciate this wisdom. Along with apprehension, hope, gratitude to staff, relief, joy and sheer terror, dark humour lurks.

Inevitably, some funny stuff relates to bottom matters. Suppositories have a Carry On comedy element and, as older men know, a prostate check with the doctor poking a finger up your backside is truly bizarre. It sets the tone for later life. You get used to medics fiddling in intimate areas. Pregnant women have it much earlier; with men, it comes with the bus pass.

The waterworks provides gallows humour, too. It's funny to sit in a waiting area surrounded by people gulping water like free champagne. Filling up is required for tests such as the magic toilet. This may appear a normal pedestal but, when used, electronic equipment whirs into action and a print-out charts parameters such as flow duration and velocity. The graphs look like volcanic activity at Vesuvius, but actually it's a bloke having a pee.

You have to laugh.

Recently, I was fitted with a heart monitor for 48 hours. It felt odd walking about town with leads connected to my chest, every heartbeat recorded by a little box. I told friends: "Don't upset me, my ticker's under surveillance."

Instructed to record symptoms and activities at the time, I was tempted to sex up my lifestyle dossier: palpitations when parachuting or zooming along in the Ferrari with a blonde. A racing pulse watching the Antiques Roadshow was too sad.

Only one thing for it – you have to laugh.