India among top 5 happiest places on earth: American author

London, Mar 10 (UNI) The five happiest places in the world are Bhutan, Iceland, Thailand, India and Switzerland, but Britain is one of the gloomiest countries on the planet, according to an American author.

Nothing makes the British quite so happy as being miserable, or so a best-selling author claimed.

Eric Weiner, who spent 10 years as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, said Britain was a nation that took ''perverse pleasure'' from being grumpy.

Mr Weiner said, ''I feel sorry for the Brits,'' in his book, ''The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.'' He added, ''The happy are few, and regarded by others as suspect.

For the British, happiness is a transatlantic import. And by transatlantic, they mean American. And by American, they mean silly, infantile drivel.'' ''Britain is a great place for grumps, and most Brits, I suspect, derive a perverse pleasure from their grumpiness,'' said the journalist.

Returning to the attack against Britain, he singled out Slough as a particularly unhappy place.

But according to researchers, however, it might be Mr Weiner himself who suffers a sense of humour failure.

The British, they suggest, could have genes linked to sarcasm, teasing, and self-deprecation ''negative humour,'' while most Americans do not.

''Certainly in the UK, TV humour is more biting,'' they added.

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