Patch Adams, he of the eponymous (and lousy) Robin Williams movie, has gone to Sri Lanka to visit the survivors of the tsunami.

Dr Adams brought a troupe of 30 clowns performing juggling, unicycle riding and puppet shows to hospitals and relief camps in the country's south. The troupe sprayed wards with soap bubbles and performed a puppet show for children suffering from cancer.

As he bounded into children's wards, one doctor asked: "Is that man looking for the psychiatric ward?"

Dr Adams has also taken his clowns to Bosnia, Africa and Afghanistan. [Note: this text is exercepted and rearranged compared with the original BBC article ]

While Adams may be a ... wee bit eccentric, other studies confirm the claim that laughter is good for your health. It turns out, for example, that laughter improves your cardio-vascular capacity. Unfortunately, there is no news from the laughter club movement, even though it started in India a decade ago, and now has 3,500 clubs world wide.