Jack Averty: Chin up! When you smile, the whole world smiles with you

You’re all probably a bit giddy with excitement at the thought of a column on Heath, or the Dark Knight, or both, but alas once again I must disappointment you all within the first few paragraphs.

It could be a great opportunity, of course, to eulogise on those subjects, Heath was a brilliant actor and Christopher Nolan made a great Batman film, but there’s an important matter to be discussed – why are people so serious?

Now I like to think I’m not a psychotic super villain who blows up hospitals and puts innocent people at risk, but I do still want to know the answer to The Joker’s question.

All around these days I see people frowning, or getting wound up, or looking fraught. There is rarely a smile in sight, let alone the look of happiness. Why?

Well, the first option is that life is just too much and the weight of it all is dragging everyone down. With Brexit, Trump and the move of the Great British Bake Off to Channel 4 life really is terrible, isn’t it?

But you can’t tell me that everyday people are walking down the street and all they think about is the economic uncertainty of leaving the European Union, or the fact that weird bloke from the American Apprentice is now President, or even that Paul Hollywood has betrayed Mel, Sue and Mary Berry in an act of such severe treachery not seen since Brutus joined in the plot to kill his cousin Julius Caesar.

I accept that these major issues might cross people’s minds from time to time and cause deep panic and serious contemplation. But all the time? Really? No way.

The other theory, which is more than likely the case, is that people don’t have their default setting set to happy. By that I mean their standard mood is to be serious, stern, grumpy, moody, whatever adjective you want to use, and they need something to happen to cheer them up and make them happy and less serious. Absolutely bonkers.

Life is just way too short, surely the best thing to do is be happy and smiley at every possible turn and then go serious when required or when something irks you rather than go through life being miserable.

What baffles me even more is that you see people who’ve been through the ringer smiling away and enjoying life way more than Joe Public whose biggest concern is a long queue in Subway.

This Jonah Hill lookalike (it’s only been mentioned to me twice this week so far) is programmed for happiness first. I get called a child quite routinely at the moment, so maybe that has something to do with it, but am I really a child for just wanting to be happy and spread it?

I feel like I’m at war with the naturally serious people; they are the anti-happiness police determined to make sure everybody knows the gravity of life and that we should only be happy at very specific moments.

Of course life is tough and there are going to be things that really do rock the boat, for want of a better phrase. My dear colleagues on the Staffordshire/Walsall team (shout out) think I might be bipolar the way I switch from elated happiness to outright fury. But just because I get overly frustrated at things doesn’t mean my default position is not to be happy.

Admittedly it doesn’t last long, on some days, but that’s life, there are going to be things that come along that anger you, or upset you or even make you feel that you can’t be happy.

But after the initial shock, what’s the best way to deal with these things? Have a ‘pity party’, as the Star’s beloved Editor likes to put it, or smile and laugh your way through it?

For every thought about Paul ‘the traitor’ Hollywood, think about the memories GBBO gave us on BBC One and the loyalty the cast showed – aside from Brutus.

For every thought about Brexit, at least remember that it gave us the battle of Thames as, in what must be the most surreal and funniest thing to ever happen in British politics, Bob Geldof and Nigel Farage traded insults from their separate boats while travelling up London’s river to Parliament.

I’m afraid I don’t really have a counter argument for Trump but at least we don’t live in America.

The fact is people have a conscious choice most of the time to be all serious and down or to be happy and smiley and spread cheer.

More people need to adopt the second approach.

Can you imagine how much of a good mood you would be put in if you walked out on to your local high street and saw everyone smiling, laughing and joking around and loving their day? I’m willing to wager the amount of money I’ll almost certainly lose on the Grand National this Saturday that a scenario like that would put a smile on your face.

But the problem is, at the moment, people are faced with the opposite, they might leave their house in a brilliant mood but be faced in the street by constant pessimism, switching their mood from elated to having to ask themselves (in the voice) ‘Why so serious?’

For the happiness warriors out there, keep going and spreading the cheer. For the perpetual downers, in the words of The Supernaturals: ‘you’d better smile’.