Emma Cowing: Keep on grumping - you'll live longer IT IS not hard to be grumpy in Britain right now. Those heady sunshine and roses moments of the summer of 2012 in which we all held hands, watched the Olympics and wittered on about how a couple of hours of theatrics from Danny Boyle meant we must be the greatest nation on earth have been replaced by a bleak autumnal feast of doom and gloom in which we have been served up government resignations, rising energy prices, a slew of ghastly murder cases and the dark spectre of the Savile enquiry. Those onesies everyone's rushing out to buy aren't helping matters either. So in some ways, the report published this month by the Longitudinal Study of Ageing suggesting that grumpy people are likely to live ten years less than happy folk might have been seen as nothing more than a blessed relief. After all, why prolong the misery? Why not just, you know, get it over with? At least there won't be a rising direct debit with npower to contend with in the afterlife (although come to think of it...) or endlessly looped footage of the Chief Whip on a bicycle on every single news channel. As if we haven't suffered enough. But hold the arsenic, put the potato peeler back in the drawer, because it turns out that being grumpy could actually be good for us. Recent research suggests that when it comes down to it, being a curmudgeon can make you better able to cope with a crisis, make fewer mistakes and communicate more effectively. According to research carried out at the University of California, grumpy folk also outperformed happy people in intelligence tests. "In contrast to happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible," stated the research. It's enough to make even Eeyore chew on his thistle a little more thoughtfully. As Brits, of course, we do grumpy rather well. Victor Meldrew may as well be our very own Felix Baumgartner, given the superstar status he was afforded at the height of One Foot In the Grave. We excel at moaning, be it about the rain, the sun, death, taxes, The Only Way Is Essex, Christmas starting too early, Ant and Dec, the price of fish, the length of policemen's hair, Christmas starting too late, and everything ever been aired on ITV2. We are the world's grumps, never happier than when we can have a good old whinge about how rubbish everything is compared to the good old days. It's such a national sport I'm surprised we didn't have a special category for it at the aforementioned Olympics. Pity then, the poor sods teeth-achingly referred to as "professional smilers." These brave souls stand valiantly on the front line of the service industry - shop workers and wait staff who must keep happy faces on at all costs during working hours in a very un-British display of friendliness. Such a strain can this put on the body and mind - increased risks of depression, high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems - that the superbly named Professor Zapf of the University of Frankfurt recently reported in the European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology that such "professional smilers" needed to be given regular grump-breaks, where they can turn off the happy face, get grumpy and be thoroughly miserable for a while. Indeed, there is growing research that being happy can ultimately make you miserable. The happy-go-lucky smiley type is far more likely to get themselves into trouble by making an impulsive life decision that they may live to regret (I, for example, must live with the consequences of choosing a velvet shagpile carpet for my bedroom), while the grumpy type will more likely weigh up the pros and cons before making a balanced decision (opting for a hardwood floor and a life that does not involve daily Hoovering). Meanwhile the stress of feeling like one must be happy and positive when faced with a difficult period in life - particularly a serious illness, such as cancer, can be detrimental - forcing the sufferer to become more stressed as they attempt to smile their way through something that frankly, no-one should have to smile at. Being grumpy may not be our most appealing national quality, but it may just be the one that's keeping us all going - particularly at such a miserable time of year (did I mention the clocks go back this weekend?). Now go away; I've got a onesie to buy.