Three years ago, school bus driver Doug Collins started laughing in a way that caught that the attention of the crowd at the Comedy Barn, the YouTube community and, more recently, iPhone owners and a documentary film crew.
It all start when Collins was asked, along with two other volunteers, to join a comedian on stage at the Comedy Barn, a local comedy club in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. As one of the other men was answering questions about his career as a tank builder, Collins began laughing in a way that stopped the comedian — as well as the entire audience — dead in his tracks.
Collins, a bus driver for Shelby County Schools, soon became a YouTube sensation when his son posted a video of his on-stage fit of laughter, spawing the creation of a Web site and an iPhone application called “The Laughman.”
Collins is now a part of “Laughology,” a documentary that “tells the story of the rise of the world wide laughter movement and the new science about the health benefits of laughter,” according to a press release. The director of the film, Albert Nerenberg, even brought Collins to London to have English neuroscientists study his brain.
It has been said that laughter is a great stress reducer and helps you live longer. If that’s true, Doug Collins just might live to see his 150th birthday.
