What's your earliest comedy memory?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I think mine is either George Don't Do That by Joyce Grenfell or Monty Python Live at Drury Lane, both of which were proudly introduced to me by my mother when I was about four. Although the troubling image of Felicity Kendal pouring gravy over her tits in The Good Life ('Why did she do that, mum?' / 'Because she's cross') might have come before that.

What was yours? I did think of limting the question to adult comedy, lest this becomes a thread about Dangermouse and Whizzer & Chips, but...oh, sod it, reveal your frst comedy memory, whatever it was.

[Neville Chamberlain]

I think my earliest memory was reading my brother's NTNOCN book and, if I'm going to reduce it down to the very first 'joke', the advert in it featuring a picture of a wrecked Fiat with the words "Built by Robots, Driven by Italians" (?).

That's off the top of my head anyway.

This one ->

[Jemble Fred]

• Fancying Miss Brahms while watching Are You Being Served, aged about 3.
• Benny Hill's Xmas Special being on while the whole family blew up balloons, at about the same age. My second cousin was a Hill's Angel.
• Going home for school dinners with a pal to watch his Dad's Young Ones videos, aged 4.

Not a first memory, but I remember when Blackadder II was first shown (I'd have been 7/8), my brother and I turned it off because it looked to us like some boring historical drama. But I think we were hooked by 'Chains'.

[alan strang]

Probably being terrified of Terry Gilliam's animations on Flying Circus.

My mother always swore blind that I was actually scared of "the man falling off his bicycle" (and that I'd run out of the room as a result). It was only when I got to see 'The Cycling Tour' when I was about 14 that I realised that it wasn't actually Mr Pither that had unnerved me but the various cuts to the cartoon bushes where those two Gilliam monsters were threatening to make an appearence.

Various memories of The Goodies too - the over-riding one being the Ribena ad parody which showed the mother and daughter grinning with rotting black teeth - something else which also gave me the creeps for years (probably because I equated it with public information films)!

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

One of the first jokes I remember properly 'getting' was a frame in The Beano, featuring the Bash St teacher in bed wearing a pyjama version of his mortar board. I still think that's one of the best jokes ever.

George Don't Do That is a great album for introducing kids to comedy - they understand what the joke is immediately. The line 'No, Sidney - Silly Old Fat Man is not a good name for a bunny rabbit' reduced me to hysterics back then, and still does now.

[TJ]

A tie between The Goodies, Rentaghost, You're Only Young Twice, Big John Little John and a repeat of Series 1 of Fawlty Towers, possibly early evenings on Saturdays, which was followed by a continuity slide plugging the LP releases.

I've also got a hazy recollection of seeing a fraction of some Python artefact being shown over Christmastime - whether it was a one-off Flying Circus repeat, ANFSCD or even a repeat of the second German show (which from my recollections it could well have been, although I've never found a corresponding transmission date) - and being confused that John Cleese from Fawlty Towers was in it without a moustache.

[Bert Thung]

Man About The House, The Goodies (Father Xmas Do Not Touch Me), Benny Hill, Max Wall

The first joke I ever heard was one my older brother told me, I never understood it at the time, but got hit when I retold my Dad it.

Did you hear about the cock-eyed circumciser? He got the sack

[The Mumbler]

Probably all around the 1975 mark: The Liver Birds (which I thought was fantastic at the time), Man About The House, the Bert & Ernie sketches on Sesame Street (and HTV started showing this when I was two, so that's probably the winner), Peter Glaze on Crackerjack, The Two Ronnies, a circus comedy show for kids called Right Charlie (which I found deeply unpleasant because the audience sounded like it was in pain), and the bit of Fawlty Towers's The Wedding Party where Basil (reading Jaws) and Sybil are in separate beds and Basil has to go and find the intruder.

[The Mumbler]

Oh yes, and I remember being both delighted that ITV were showing an episode of Bless This House in April 76 as a tribute to Sid James, and sad that the tribute was because he'd just died.

[sick as a pike]

Possibly the record of Gerard Hoffnung's 'Bricklayer' monologue.

[Jemble Fred]

Possibly the record of Gerard Hoffnung's 'Bricklayer' monologue.

Ah. I was just thinking in terms of TV. I was listening to Max Boyce in the womb.

[Paul Dee]

George Don't Do That is a great album for introducing kids to comedy - they understand what the joke is immediately. The line 'No, Sidney - Silly Old Fat Man is not a good name for a bunny rabbit' reduced me to hysterics back then, and still does now.

Yes, that was probably my first comedy memory too. I remember listening to it with my mum on the car's tape player on the way to some church fete and asking her to play it again and again.

Other than that I really couldn't say. They're are massive gaps in my memory but I remember watching Citizen Smith repeats on BBC1 and absolutely loving those. God knows when that was though.

[weirdbeard]

Probably Duty Free or Never The Twain, both on ITV, some time in the mid-80's.

[difbrook]

When I was a little tiny difbrook, I found a double-album compilation of excerpts from other comedy albums, called "We are most amused". My first real exposure to an awful lot of stuff that's now more or less encoded into my system.

I remember howling with laughter at a Spike Milligan extract, "Return to Sorrento"...

"I must go down to the sea again,
to the lonely sea and the sky.
I left my vest and socks there, I wonder if they're dry?"

also, this was the first time I'd ever heard any of Hancock's "Blood Donor". There must have been a time when it wasn't as familiar to me (and unremarked upon) as breathing.

I don't know what happened to that album. Scoured charity shops for years for it. I imagine if I ever find it again, the tears of nostalgia will flow .

so that's my first comedy memory, although I remember being terrified at the age of five by the bit from The Goodies where a giant drops someone directly towards the camera...

[alan strang]

I don't know what happened to that album. Scoured charity shops for years for it. I imagine if I ever find it again, the tears of nostalgia will flow.

On Ronco records - sold in aid of The Princes Trust (hence the 'special contributions' from Mike Yarwood as Prince Charles which punctuated the tracks). It was a very popular compilation in its day - most of my contemporary schoolchums had copies (I think Poundstretcher-type stores had a load of copies for sale at one point).

[TJ]

I don't know what happened to that album. Scoured charity shops for years for it. I imagine if I ever find it again, the tears of nostalgia will flow.

On Ronco records - sold in aid of The Princes Trust (hence the 'special contributions' from Mike Yarwood as Prince Charles which punctuated the tracks). It was a very popular compilation in its day - most of my contemporary schoolchums had copies (I think Poundstretcher-type stores had a load of copies for sale at one point).

I have the book of it somewhere. Very much leaning towards the Alan Coren/Bill Tidy/William Rushton school of comedy, and all the better for it.

[difbrook]

I don't know what happened to that album. Scoured charity shops for years for it. I imagine if I ever find it again, the tears of nostalgia will flow.

On Ronco records - sold in aid of The Princes Trust (hence the 'special contributions' from Mike Yarwood as Prince Charles which punctuated the tracks). It was a very popular compilation in its day - most of my contemporary schoolchums had copies (I think Poundstretcher-type stores had a load of copies for sale at one point).

yes, that's the chap! It may even have been Poundstretcher  I bought it in, or whatever the equivalent store was in Aberystwyth (sometime in 1982, I think). Having just had a look around to see what else I could scrabble together about it, I note that a copy is for sale on ebay for about 3 quid. That's rather tempting, just to see if I remember how the tracks all flow together...

[alan strang]

That's rather tempting, just to see if I remember how the tracks all flow together...

Having Tony Hancock saying "How dare you!" over the slapping of Python's 'Massage From The Swedish Prime Minister" confused me for years.

[difbrook]

I've just received a PM, offering me an original  copy of "We are most amused". I am chuffed beyond measure. It's made my day.

[The Boston Crab]

A home video of myself doing David Bellamy impressions.

I'll remember to never ever never ever indulge my child's sense of the comedic.

[JCBillington]

My dad playing the LP of The Blood Doner/Radio Ham would be the earliest. I am not sure when we got a video, but that opened the floodgates - my dad would sit me down to watch all manner of unsuitable stuff that was otherwise on far too late for me. I remember being alternately horrified and amused by 'And Now For Something Completely Different', aged about 7.

[Loukides]

Watching Till Death Us Do Part and Up Pompeii, and listening to a shellac 78 of Phil Harris singing Woodman, Woodman Spare That Tree and the Darktown Poker Club.

[difbrook]

Watching Till Death Us Do Part and Up Pompeii, and listening to a shellac 78 of Phil Harris singing Woodman, Woodman Spare That Tree and the Darktown Poker Club.

I got into American OTR (Old Time Radio) a few years back - I'm now of the opinion that the Jack Benny Program in all it's multi-sponsored guises is one of the funniest radio shows I've had the pleasure of hearing. For me, he was second only to Fred Allen where American comedy radio is concerned.

one of the things that really did surprise me though, was when I suddenly made the connection between Phil Harris's appearances, and the fact that this was the same bloke who voiced Baloo the Bear in Disney's Jungle Book.

Family members recall me chortling delightedly in my pram listening to my album of disney songs when I was a few months old, and now in my thirties I found myself listening to a completely unrelated programme - and chortling delightedly all over again.

so there you go - Phil Harris turning up in two different  childhood comedy memories!

[Melth]

Tom Good chasing down the road after Lenin the cockerel and them both boarding a bus. It was the mid-80s and I would have been about three.

[Pepotamo1985]

Fawlty Towers - Communication Problems. I got given a FT VHS when I was ickle, and that was the first ep on the vid. Although, it could easily have been The Monty Python albatross sketch, because I used to get played Python vinyls. That sketch sticks out in my mind because there was so much swearing.

[sproggy]

Spike Milligan's Q-series 'What are we going to do now' has had a lasting impact on my psyche.

Also a scene where Graham Starky (I think) gets punched in the face with one of those extendable boxing glove type contraptions after being repeatedly beckoned towards the camera from far away in the distance.  I think is was 'The case of the mukkinese battlehorn' but I'm not certain (anyone able to confirm?)

[trotsky assortment]

Probably the earliest comedy memory I have would be watching 'Dad's Army' with my dad in the late 70s.

[Clinton Morgan]

The Kenny Everett Video Show: Being terrified of the mud men and Kenny taking me, my sister and my brother's photographs. "Oh no! They've gone awayyy."

The Goodies: Drinking a banana milkshake before I went to bed and seeing Bill Oddie run very fast to a rocket ship to the Benny Hill theme tune dressed as Superman. I remember a title sequence involving The Goodies dressed as Superman and their arses extending like flat tables.

Benny Hill: Running very fast. Plus the irate woman in the bus queue turning into the She-Hulk.

EDIT: Plus my brother's Not 1982 and Not 1983 books. I cut out the make your own Cornflakes packet and create your own pornograph pages.

[ColinBradshaw]

I remember laughing like a drain at a Jerry Lewis film. I think he was in a mental hospital pretending to be mental. Can't remember the name of it, though.


EDIT: Just looked it up. It was The Disorderly Orderly.

[Ken Oath]

Good thread!

Audio: LIstening to Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief on record when I was about five. I used to find 'Novel Writing' hysterical and so much fun to listen to. I didn't have a clue what it was about, but I think I just loved Palin's intonations throught the sketch ("A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight...")
Even as a tyke I loved the Ralph Mellish sketch. ("...Ralph Mellish, a filing clerk at a local insurance firm, was on his way to work as usual when... dramatic music... Nothing happened".
"Have the new paperclips arrived Enid? "Yes. They're over there Mr Mellish." )

But to relate another scary/unsettling feeling about a piece of comedy, mine would have to be the 'Whooping Cough' sketch (don't know the official name off hand)... The following piece of dialogue used to make me feel very very uneasy as a child:

Jones: Well, I'm a simple soul, I don't understand all that.  All I know is he's not the same man as I married.

Chapman: Am I the man you married Mrs. Aegis?

Jones: No, no.  Get away.  You'll get struck off.

Chapman: Come on, come on.

Jones: I can't.  I'm eating dog.

Chapman: Come on, just a quick examination.

Jones: No, get off, I'm married.

Palin: But, Dr. Quatt was a man of quite remarkable medical insight, skill and determination.  And within a few minutes, he had completely removed my wife's knickers.

Jones: Get out you! (door slams)  oo, oo, doctor.  Oh doctor Quatt.  

Chapman: Now, now.  Put your tongue in my mouth.  

Jones: No!

Chapman: Oh, come on, come on.  I've got your knickers off.

My bold, obviously. But this exchange used to make me feel sooo uneasy. I probably didn't understand concepts like rape or sex without consent at that age, but I knew that this doctor was a very naughty man. Now I just think it's marvellously seedy and funny.


Visual: I'd have to second the 'Communication Problems' episode of Fawlty Towers. Probably about the same age as Matching Tie and Handkerchief. I certainly remember saying "Is this a piece of your brain" at school so it can't have been much older than five or six. It's a good episode for kids - lots of jokes they can appreciate: the 22 rolls of toilet paper; the hitting of Mrs Richards' head; the charades where Basil tries to let Polly know the name of the horse; when Basil falls over, exasperated at the end after being asked if there is a Mrs Richards staying there; Basil's maniacal laughter when he realises he's up ten pounds etc etc etc. I still have an enormous nostalgic fondness for the episode.

Edit for fuckwitted grammar.