According to a new book, humour is the only way to get through tough times. What's more, it can endear you to friends and colleagues. Josephine Fairley agrees and explains how a belly laugh can be best deployed in the office

I love the sound of laughter in an office.

Maybe not behind me. But even being laughed at (occasionally) is better than an office which never echoes to the sound of hoots, guffaws and tears of hysteria. Looking back, all my favourite places to work have been the ones where my sides ached from laughing so much. Where, just occasionally, I lay on the floor like a beetle, legs waving in the air, in stitches at my colleagues' jokes.

And since then, I've always firmly believed: you spend more of your waking hours at the office than at home, so you've got to enjoy it. In business, or on the career ladder - if you can't see the funny side the alternative is usually tears of sorrow.

And it could so easily have happened to me in the past few days, if humour hadn't saved the day.

First, one of my team (of two) staff at my computer start-up was poached by a rival website. Then, two days later, I opened an eviction e-mail, serving notice on us to quit by January because the buildling's being torn down.

Suddenly, 200 companies were all scrambling for the same Soho offices - including us. Five hours later, while I was fire-fighting that, my other (fabulous) team member dropped a bombshell: her boyfriend's being relocated to New York, and she's going with him. In January.

(I've always found that, in business, that it never rains but it pours.)

I called my business partner. "We don't need an office," she countered. "We haven't got any staff!"

And rather than weeping, I found myself laughing like a drain at the ridiculousness of the situation. Somehow, being able to see the funny side of what is a really, really challenging scenario by anyone's standards, made it bearable.

I'm with Nora Ephron who once said: 'Everything is copy' and who so brilliantly turned the events in her life - like her hideous divorce - into hilarious material. How much more attractive is that than bitterness and regret?

There's nothing like a laugh to relieve tension.

It reminded me of another completely disastrous business situation which was only relieved by a huge belly laugh.

A couple of years ago, on a Sunday night after we'd already gone to bed, the manager of our bakery called to say there'd been a break-in. Turns out, the safe had been nicked. We got dressed, raced down there, adrenaline pumping. While police fingerprinted the joint, a detective and my husband set off down a side alley to see if they could find any evidence.

A few seconds later, my husband bounded back in like Tigger to ask the manager 'If she could come and identify this safe'. Our hearts soared: perhaps the robbers hadn't managed to get away with the weekend's takings, after all?

The detective shone his torch on a doorstep opposite the back of the bakery. "No," my manager shook her head. "That's not OUR safe."

Turns out that the people opposite had decided - after 17 years - to put their never-used safe out for the dustmen on the doorstep. That. Exact. Night.

We all fell about laughing: what were the chances? Even though we were several grand down, the safe incident made us feel like we were in an episode of Only Fools and Horses - a brief, preposterous moment of levity that carried us through, and gave us something to chuckle about while filling in the endless insurance paperwork.

Where a GSOH can get you through a bad day in the office as an employee, it can also boost you as an employer. And it's got to be pretty high up on the list of personal qualities in anyone I employ. (Eeyore-types need not apply.)

Apparently I'm not alone.

A new book, Elements of Wit: Mastering the Art of Being Interesting by Benjamin Errett, is a guide to mental sharpness and humour that extolls the virtues of 'spontaneous creativity' and says that 'wit is to life what salt is to food'. It's about saying the right thing at the right time, ideally off the cuff. “You want to make people glad that you opened your mouth,” says Errett.

Forbes Magazine reports on dozens of surveys that suggest humour can be a key to success. In one, 91 per cent of executives were found to believe that a sense of humour is important for career advancement, while 84 per cent of people believed that those with a good sense of humour will do a better job.

Another study - from the Bell Leadership Institute - found that the two most desirable traits in leaders were a strong work ethic and a good sense of humour. Employees pick up on the mood of a boss, I've always found. If he or she is anxious and worried, it's more contagious than flu and results in paralysis of the team. If he or she can find the humour - which is also generallly a reflection of confidence that there's a solution to be found - how much better it is.

But of course there's humour - and then there's humour. Clearly, you have to tread carefully. Jokes should never be at the expense of others, and it's best to leave sarcasm out of your personal stand-up routine. (Unless you know your colleagues extremely well, and are completely confident they won't be offended.)

Taking the mickey out of an employee, meanwhile, is very dangerous territory if you don't want HR repercussions. Any kind of poking fun on grounds of gender, sexuality or race must definitely be avoided - I hope that goes without saying. But sending yourself up? Endearing, I've always thought. Humorous stories allow us to share common experiences, and laugh together.

How free people feel to laugh in the office depends on the culture. Workplaces that are less hierarchical and more innovative allow for greater openness with humour. In a setting where everyone's looking over their shoulder, feeling like they have to keep up appearances, humour's more likely to be suppressed. (At least till you're out with your non-work mates on Friday night and can turn this week's working nightmares into fodder for hilarity.)

So: I consider creating an environment in which people are encouraged to find humour and have a good laugh to be one of my greatest achievements.

If someone doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, it's got to be laughter for me, every time.

And if you'll excuse me, I've now got to go and look at some offices. Because despite my business partner's timely, tension-breaking joke, I have faith that we will have a staff again. And that the sound of their laughter will bounce off the walls of wherever we end up. And won't that be a happy ending?