I would like to dedicate this fic to the recently cancelled show Big Ideas. It appears that our withering nation was too small for you.

Michael Banks had seen many odd things since Mary Poppins had been hired to nanny him and his little sister Jane, but Uncle Albert's house wasn't one of them. The main features were brown patterned carpet and wooden walls, and a roof much higher than was typical.

Uncle Albert was a round man who talked too loudly and laughed too much. There was something unsettling about him, but Michael assumed that it was rude to stare.

'Welcome children!' he spattered, 'come and have some tea!'

Mary nodded at Michael and Jane, telling the children to have tea with the scary man. She said to him 'Tell me you haven't been laughing again, Uncle Albert.'

Michael saw the man shake his head. 'No Mary. I've found the perfect cure for my condition – newspapers!' He read from a tattered copy of the Guardian in his hands. 'War, politics, Justin Bieber.'

A snort erupted from Michael's face.

'Yes?' Uncle Albert raised a critical eyebrow, as if offended.

'I'm so, so sorry, Uncle Albert,' said Michael, trying hold his face together in the face of hilarious entropy. 'It's just that you listed Justin Bieber at the end of a list of bad things. That's comedy gold. What next? Don't tell me, Twilight jokes?'

'As a matter of fact…'

'Michael, I think it best that you stick to tea drinking from here on out.' Said Mary Poppins.

'I know a good joke!' chirped Jane. 'What do you call a man with no feet?'

'I don't know,' said Uncle Albert, placing his china cup on the table in preparation of a laughquake.

Mary Poppins shot Uncle Albert a warning look. 'Don't push yourself Albert. The moment – the MOMENT – you think of anything funny, just imagine you're watching Two and a Half Men, please, just imagine a laugh track.'

Uncle Albert was braver than his Clive-Palmer like frame indicated. 'I can't avoid the gags forever. Tell me little girl, what do I call a man with no feet?'

'His name! He's a human being, goddamnit!' Jane exploded into a cosmos of laughter.

A sound came from Uncle Albert, hollow and robotic hilarious honks.

Mary Poppin's eyes lit up. 'You've done it Albert! Fake laughter!'

'You're right, by gum!' exclaimed Uncle Albert while slurping a cup of piping hot green tea. 'You tell me a joke, boy!'

'Knock knock!'

'Who's there!' said Albert, face set with the concrete of stoicism.

'DEATH!' shouted Michael.

A peal of chuckles escaped from the side of Albert's lips, like a violent fart from between tightly clenched buttocks. His face turned red as his entire being rose from the table, like a later day Simon Magus, and floated against that high roof.

'Not again!' groaned Mary Poppins as her uncle was reduced to idiotic chuckling.

Michael saw Uncle Albert clutch at this chest and roll up into a foetal position.

'He's having a heart attack!' Mary Poppins was calm in emergencies, because she tended to start most of them. 'Jane, go get Bert!'