FORMER hostage Terry Waite has told how he would sometimes wake up laughing in the darkest days of his captivity.

Mr Waite, 76, who spent almost five years in solitary confinement in the Lebanon, was in Bournemouth to give a lecture and book-signing for charity.

His lecture, Survival in Solitude, was an account of his physical and mental resilience.

He told the Daily Echo he was interested in mental health problems, which affect one in three of the population at some time in their lives.

“What I want to talk about is my own experience of solitary confinement, which is a situation that many people say can lead to rapid mental deterioration," he said.

“I had to find a way of dealing with that and coping with it. I think I coped reasonably successfully."

Mr Waite became a comic novelist this year with the publication of Voyage of the Golden Handshake.

“When in captivity one had to learn how to use creative imagination and also to not be morbid entirely – you need a sense of humour because to be able to laugh is also important,” he said.

“As you are dealing with problems that are very stressful, it’s essential to be able to laugh. I wanted to make myself laugh and attempt to make other people laugh. It’s been well received,” he said.

Mr Waite, then special envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, was kidnapped in 1987 by an Islamic militia group while attempting to negotiate the release of western hostages including John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. His wife did not know for more than four years whether he was alive.

He said he had found humour even in the bleakest times.

“The late Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, said that when in a situation of anxiety, allow your unconscious to come to your aid and it will,” he said.

“What I found in those days was the situation was grim all day, but at night my dreams were not. I didn’t have nightmares, I would wake up sometimes laughing. It was my subconscious compensating.”

Mr Waite co-founded Y Care International, the YMCA’s development agency, and founded Hostage UK, which gives support to hostages’ families.

He said he makes an income from speaking and writing so that he does not draw any pay from his charities.

Of his novel, he said: “Someone described it as a cross between a Carry On Film and Fawlty Towers set on board a ship.”