Stand up for your health!People have always enjoyed laughing,and there has always been humour .One favourite type comedy is called stand-up. Stand-up is a kind of comedy that is done on a stage by a comedian talking straight to audience members. A stand-up comedian may tease an audience member, or might decide to tell different jokes depending upon how the audience reacted to his or her previous jokes.Types of stand-upThere are a variety of different styles of stand-up comedy.Some comedians tell jokes about the way people behave or about daily life. For example, they may talk about how people act when they queue up ,or they may ask why it only rains when you forget your umbrella. Other comedians rely on visual humour. Their humour may be inspired by objects. For example , one comedian uses a huge hammer to break watermelons while he makes jokes about what he is doing. Another comedian points to a video tennis game and says, Ive been playing tennis every day for a month . I dont understand why I am not losing weight! Yet other comedians may trip over chairs, walk into doors, and fall down on stage in order to make people laugh . This kind of absurd humour is not very funny lf you are only listening and not watching the comedians performance. The last kind of comedian does impressions-he or she will act or speak like a well-known person in order to make fun of that person. While this kind of humour may sound cruel,it usually only works if both the comedian and the audience have affection for or admire the person being made fun of.A famous comedianOnly a few stand-up comedians as television and film performers later on in life. One such person is Billy Crystal. Like other stand-up comedians who have gone on to act in films, Crystal still enjoys stand-up. People around the world enjoy watching him when he hosts the Academy Award. He has hosted the show eight times . Each time, he performs his stand-up routine in frontof millions of people when the show is broadcast live on TV . One little-known fact is that when Crystal is the host of the Academy Awards, he always keeps a toothbrush in his pocket for good luck. He says it is because when he started practising stand-up as a child, he told himself jokes while standing in from of the mirror, brushing his teeth.One reason Crystal has become so famous is that he is very quick thinking, and is often able to come up with new jokes about the people and things around him. When Crystal was the host of the 2004 Academy Awards, a very old actor , who had acted in films before they had sound, gave a speech. He talked for several minutes,but there was a technical problem, and no one in the audience could hear him. They could only see him standing there moving his lips. Instead of telling the joke that he had planned, Crystal made up a new one. He said, It seems appropriate that he got his start in silent films! The audience howled with laughter.Crystal is popular with all age groups and has the ability to amuse people all over the world. this proves that stand-up can be enjoyed by everyone. You can expect to hear a lot more from Billy Crystal-he has no plans to stop making films, or to stop telling jokes. He hopes to follow in the footsteps of other famous comedians, such as Bob Hope and George Burns, who lived to be 100 years old and kept working until nearly the end of their lives.Laughter is good for your health!Nowadays, stand-up comedy is popular all over the world. Doctors have been researching what effect stand-up and other forms of comedy have on us , and have discovered that people who laugh a lot live longer. They say this is because when you laugh, your brain sends chemicals around your body that are good for you.Laughing helps your body stay healthy and can even help you fight pain. Maybe this explains the long lives of men like in Bob Hope and George Burns. Whatever the reason,research shows that in the end , the English saying, Laughter is the best medicine, may be true after all. So,go and make someone laugh-it just might help them (and you) live longer.