The World Has Survived Because It Has Laughed. This odd message came to me from Stefan Furtonov. It came in the post on very thin grey paper.

Furtonov was the Director Of The House Of Humour And Satire, which was situated in a small town in Bulgaria. This was after I had written a series of novels which were grouped together under the banner 'humour.' Furtonov invited me to donate one of my books for the institute’s library, which had a world wide collection of written humour. I didn’t think that it would be a comprehensive collection as writers have a strict aversion to giving their work away for free.

But the concept of collecting humour in this wholesale way intrigued me. All those old jokes and japes cackling away in vaults. I sent him a book and asked for information about his project.

The information arrived printed on the same poverty paper, but there was a lot of it.

The House of Humour was in a town called Gabrovo. There were three floors of humorous paintings, cartoons, films, (animated and otherwise), copies of comic songs, quirky religious icons, and catalogues of jokes in all languages. Every two years there was a festival when humourists of the world gathered to tickle each other to death. There were prizes, in levas, for the best entries.

Somehow the idea of all these old gags cackling away in vaults nagged at me to do something to release them from their misery. So I wrote, in a light hearted way about how a light-hearted quip could find itself in a museum, informing readers of a discovery.

This piece was printed in the Telegraph and soon after I had a call from the Press Attache at the Bulgarian Legation in London. The journalist. Orlin Amerov, told me that he liked my piece because it was unbiased, in fact it wouldn’t be stretching things to call it friendly.

This was Communist Bulgaria, a country not used to getting a favourable mention in the British press. Amerov mentioned that the bi-annual festival was happening next month and would I like to go and see the phenomena for myself?

This was what is known as a freebee, so I negotiated passage for my wife as well and we set off. The plane took us to Varna, which was the airport for a seaside resort called Sunny Beach and a couple of hundred miles from Gabrovo. but we had a driver, with a LADA, who was determined to get us there for the opening dinner.

He set off at such a lick that pigeons couldn't get out of his way and ended up splattered on the windscreen. About 50 miles short he ran out of petrol, and honked and honked in a sleepy village until someone opened the petrol station that was closed for the night.

We swept into Gabrovo about ten in the evening. The official function and dinner was well over. The Festival’s press officer, Mr Popov, caught up with us. "Mr Saddler. You and I will stay together until the end of this Festival," he said solemnly. I never saw him again. But he did weave in the background, making arrangements for us to go to a Pop festival In Sunny Beach, but when I refused to go his influence faded.

In the morning I was introduced to The Joke. Gabrovo prided itself on its meanness. The town's Emblem was an egg with a tap on it. This town had been rejected for twinning with Aberdeen. I was shown how the statue of the town’s most famous citizen had been mounted on a rock in the river so that he wouldn’t get in the way of any commercial development. Unlike the Scots who get ratty when called skinflints these people relished their reputation. There was genuine pride in this example of nearness.

But now it was time to meet Furtonov, a bald headed roly-poly man who had built this humour empire, and visit the museum...

The museum was there all right, a low modern building. Outside there was a clanking model of Artful Peter, a mythical Don Quixote figure, dressed in armour for jousting but facing the wrong way round on his horse. Was this for confusing his opponent? (Artful eh?). There were walls of paintings, sculptures and cartoons, mostly from Russia, which were ponderous, inscrutable and impenetrable. There were three floors of this. On the top floor there were religious icons, but none of it raised a smile.

I told Furtonov Jack Benny's joke which I thought suited the occasion. Highwayman. "Your money or your life." (long pause) "Come on. Your money or your life." Benny. "Wait a minute, I’m thinking." It may have lost everything in the translation, for Furtonov had the expression of a man who was listening to a comic song that had just turned vulgar.

In the end I began to think that I might have lost my own sense of humour. I wandered around the exhibits. There were plenty of visitors from overseas. From all the eastern bloc countries, but also from Australia, Canada, France. Italy and America, and I could see that nobody. absolutely nobody. was laughing. Not a chuckle, not a snigger. This was serious funny business. It showed the gap between West and Eastern concepts of humour. I took some books of cartoons home with me and only the ones from Italy and France raised a flicker of a smile.

For a humour Festival it had been a depressing business. Gabrovo is still on the tourist list of somewhere to see, but I don’t recommend it.

Allen Sadler