VIEWPOINT
Word to the wise
This month our columnist suffers from an embarrassing bout of borborygmus, as her belly insists on doing all the talking
by SUSIE DENT
Happily,I am used to belly laughs, or ‘boffolas’ as they used to be called. Working alongside some of the land’s funniest comedians on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown regularly makes my sides ache from heavy chortling. But the ‘belly’ part of ‘belly laughter’ is not always such a happy state of affairs. In fact, being a relatively shy person, my stomach is probably the noisiest thing about me.
I may even describe myself as ‘ventripotent’, a word that means ‘powerfully bellied’ and which nicely flips the negative into the positive if you’re feeling The Bulge at this time of the year. I am, if anything, too skinny, but I’ve decided my stomach has a different kind of superpower, and it likes to shout about it from the rooftops.