“Fat tart”!” No I don’t!

But I echo the votes for Fawlty Towers – sheer 5 star brilliance. And most importantly the Cleeses knew when to stop – on a pinnacle – and refused all blandishments from the BBC for another series or two or…..So many writers accept the blandishments and sitcoms cease to be funny and become boring and repetitious.

I also enjoyed the Ripping Yarns series with Terry Jones and Michael Palin, their joint post-Python series. Perfectly written.

That’s astonishing and a marvellous example of human determination. And credit to the authorities for allowing her a license. Could that happen here?

How accurately that shows how extraordinarily personal comedy is. In any family I can guarantee that there will be things which amuse everyone and things which only amuse some. So I suppose two people will never entirely share the same sense of humour.

Harry Hill has to be in my top 5. But I think he is currently unique because his comedy verges on the surreal and I cannot think of anyone else, current, who is like Harry in any way. I actually don’t have much time for his “Burp”, which is of course what he is now best known for and awarded for.

A seminal book for me, growing up in the fifties. Rumours abound that he continued to write after his last New Yorker publication and that his refuge will be full of literary classics. I wonder.

What about Dara O’Briain? He does swear a bit, but he can be genuinely funny.

Leaves me cold. Anyone like Al Murray? Do you remember him as Harry Hill’s “big brother Alan”?

Yes, of course, it is easily possible to be funny without swearing and many are, although, personally, Michael McIntyre leaves me cold. But what makes us laugh is a very personal and subjective matter.

I am not sure about the link between social behaviour in the UK and comedians swearing. Who is emulating whom? But I certainly feel we are a ruder, coarser, more ill-mannered society than I remember as a youngster growing up in the fifties.