![]() This breaking of the fourth wall is as delightful and involving to a contemporary audience as it was intended to be almost a century ago. At a time when screwball comedies were delivering comic verbal duelling at a pace that still impresses, Laurel and Hardy relied on the simplicity of a good line and an exasperated look directly into the camera. As I grew older, I began to appreciate the choreography of those routines and, more importantly, the sophistication of the sparse, spoken gags. Laurel and Hardy’s slapstick routines, simple dialogue and plots (mainly consisting of turning everyday tribulations into Herculean trials of endurance) were easily appealing to a kid. ![]() ![]() Today, alas, there are fewer telly programmes that can be a shared family experience, and classic comedy shorts are rarely to be found despite the plethora of channels. Back then, one of the joys of the summer and Christmas holidays was to be able to tune in to BBC2, see fabulous double bills and hear the whole family laugh together. I first “discovered” them, like most people, from the endless showings on television when I was about six years old and became – and remain – totally smitten. Though Chaplin took fewer than two years to find a foothold in the burgeoning new art form known as cinema, Jefferson needed a further 20 years, a name change to Stan Laurel, and being teamed with a studio player called Oliver Hardy to cement what is still regarded as the foremost comedy double act of all time. These two British lads were going to revolutionise film forever. The troupe’s main attraction was a rising London-born music hall star called Charles Chaplin. It is almost 100 years ago that a 20-year-old Lancashire lad called Arthur Stanley Jefferson boarded a ship bound for America with a comedy troupe. ![]()
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