Humour.

At the end of my working day I habitually pour my glass of red and switch on the TV in the hope of finding something to relax to. This evening trawling didn’t find much so I settled for ‘The Pink Panther’ which I’ve seen before obviously but the episode that came up was the car chase with all the protagonists in fancy dress and so I watched because this Makes Me Laugh. In fact this can reduce me to tears. Before the wine kicked in I was wondering why some comedy can do this - reduce me to tears and inhibit my already dodgy breathing apparatus.

In this scene it is the addition of one character - the still-upright-and-just-about-in-charge inebriate. As he puts one foot carefully in front of the other to cross the road the inevitable arrival of the car driven by a gorilla sets him back hastily. It screeches past him to be followed, just as he is about to dismiss the first car as an hallucination and recover his equilibrium, the car containg St. George and the Dragon, followed, after an interval for him to once more regain his grip on reality, by another gorilla, and so on until I’m a heap of quivering jelly on the couch.

I had a phone call this afternoon from a dearly loved friend who now lives in California. All this introspection on humour and what makes me laugh reminded me of the many hugely enjoyable arguments - sorry, discussions - we’ve had over the years on many more grave subjects, but the ones that stick in my head are those that concerned just this subject. He is a great fan of ‘Frasier’ and in the days when I would call black white after a glass of whatever house wine was on offer in the local hostelry, (and so would he usually after a glass of Guinness, with or without the natty clover leaf that some bar tenders can manage) we disagreed on the subject of British v. American humour. I had to stick up for my opinion so that made Frasier Not Funny, but this seems like a good moment to admit that maybe I do find the programme (heaven knows there have been enough repeats for me to have had a chance to change my opinion) erm.... well, er - worth a laugh or two.

It doesn’t take much to make me laugh but it takes a very special sort of sitcom or comedian or film to make me weep with laughter. On Sunday I was treated to a good hysterical weep revisiting ‘The Adventures of Picasso’ a Swedish film issued in 1978 and made by Tage Danielsson loosely based on the life of Picasso and opening with the quote from the man himself "Art is a lie that leads us closer to the truth." N & I saw it when it first came out and certain scenes have stayed with me over the decades, notably Wilfred Brambell (Steptoe) as Alica B. Toklass and Bernard Cribbens as Gertrude Stein. Alice forgets her position as Gertrude’s humble sidekick and is sharply reminded by the attention-seeking Grande Dame's reproving: 'Alice! Be Talk-less!" Later Alice dresses as a fairy and tries to seduce another artist - imagine Steptoe dressed as a fairy and I challenge you not to laugh. There are also the scenes in which the Bolshoi Ballet, scenery and costumes created by Picasso, premieres in London before the King and Queen, but, fed cheaply at supper on cauliflower, the dancers find themselves able to ascend higher than usual in their grande jette, battements and split leaps, driven upward by the violent explosions of gaseous farts, and the performance isn’t so well received as they would have hoped..

There are some clever scenes too, for instance the one in which Pablo is about to be electrocuted in an imaginary era of American prohibition of Art. He draws himself a window in the execution chamber and escapes.

My present to myself for myself this Christmas (if I earn enough) is to be the complete ‘Allo ‘Allo.’ That always manages to reduces me to tears.