Ha ha ha ha ha
Seldom have I watched anything less funny than a series of 'jokes' about smoking taken from old silent films and shown on tele- vision last Sunday evening. There has al- ways been a kind of inverted intellectual snobbery in the way clever young men treat the early cinema. A man tried to light a cigar with a candle. The candle bent away as he sought its light. It wasn't very funny the first time. But as with all silent films, the first time was never enough. Once they had got hold of a visual 'joke', however unfunny, they could scarcely bear to let it go. The 'joke' went on and on, like Charlie Chaplin used to do. With the possible exception of Proust Chaplin remains the biggest bore of the twentieth century, unlikely to be ex- celled, unfunny, all schmalz and kitsch, a mixture of self-satisfaction and self-pity.
While I am on, I wish the clever young men on telly, after they have shown us something which is supposed to be funny but which manifestly is not, would refrain from smirk- ing their self-indulgent smirks when the TV cameras return to their faces.
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