Now, thats the sort of knife-edge humour that makes any self-help pill easier to swallow. But alongside the one-liners The trouble with the gene pool is that theres no life guard and Remember, some small children are frightened by fireworks; another great way to scare them is ghost stories there are glittering gems of advice.

You only have to Be Brilliant for four minutes at a time for other people to tune into your brilliance, say the authors. If you convey a sense of happiness, positivity and passion, then those around you will have almost no choice, physiologically and psychologically, but to be positive, too.

Now, even the most miserable among us can surely manage four minutes of being fantastic the theory being that the feedback is so affirmative, and the endorphin rush so delightful, that well do it again and again, until being upbeat becomes a habit that reaps its own rewards.

The book, which follows on from The Art of Being Brilliant, has been written by a couple of home-grown happiness experts, who travel the country giving pep talks to blue-chip companies such as DHL, Waitrose, IKEA and Hewlett-Packard, as well as the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, recently wooed in a take-over bid by Pfizer.

Were not trying to be the bloody Waltons here, sighs joint author Andy Whittaker. You cant turn negatives into positives, but you can try to go about dealing with setbacks in a positive way.

Whittaker, 40, is a former army mechanic turned holiday rep turned salesman, who turned his back on soul-sapping corporate life to do stand-up comedy and study mindfulness, spirituality and neuro-linguistic programming. Divorced with a teenage daughter, he asks, inscrutably deadpan: Can you put in that Im single, please? That would help me a lot. Dont worry about fielding the responses Im happy to take a load of phone calls from nutters just to find The One.

His co-author is Andy Cope, 47, from a small village in Derbyshire, whose bon-mots include: If I miss the bus there wont be another one until next Tuesday. Theres a life lesson in staying on top of things. Married with two children, Cope is an academic and childrens author, who has now passed volume 20 of his best-selling Spy Dog and Spy Cat series.

Cope provides the academic input, Whittaker brings in the laughs, making them strong contenders for being crowned the Morecambe and Wise of personal development, if there were such a title.

Im supposed to be the clever one because I got a degree in psychology, says Cope. But it was all about symptoms and syndromes and dwelling on the negatives. After university, I went into retail management and then adult education, but something drew me back to psychology, but of a more positive sort. He is currently completing a PhD at Loughborough University, looking at happiness in this country and investigating what he calls the two percenters, people who are genuinely happy, today and every day. Its a blessing, but also a skill that can be learnt.

We spend our lives deferring happiness, says Cope. When I pass my exams, Ill be happy, when I get my degree, Ill be happy; when I get my first job and buy a huge flat-screen telly, Ill be happy. But maybe being your Best Version of Yourself is what will make you happy?

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A very British way to get happy