Bring back non-sweary buffoons

ONLINE petitions seem to be all the rage these days.

Get 100,000 signatures and your petition has to be considered for debate in parliament.

Given the number of selfevidently certifiable fruitcakes there are around these days (how’s the wife, Nigel?) that seems like asking for trouble, leaving the door open for every disgruntled loon in the land with too much time on his hands to waste the time of our elected representatives.

So here’s my idea for a petition. Some of the happiest times of my life have been spent in front of a television watching long-dead people I have never met making complete fools of themselves.

People like Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Now, it might be rose-tinted nostalgia, but it does seem to me that these geniuses used to be on the telly fairly regularly, especially on high days and holidays.

But where are they now? I can’t remember the last time I saw any of them.

In an age of fear, we can all do with some inspired silliness

Could it be their casual approach to violence – however obviously cartoonish – has made them unsuitable for today’s viewers, especially the children, sensitive as they are to anything that isn’t naked or on the internet?

Or are we just too sophisticated now to laugh at buffoons who don’t swear and fall down a lot?

That can’t be it, otherwise how would you explain the career of Miranda Hart?

Anyway, it strikes me that living as we are in an age of fear and uncertainty, we could all do with some inspired silliness.

Who can worry about Trump and Putin or Brexit when a fat man has just had a piano dropped on his head, the only damage is to his bowler hat and he’s left twiddling his tie as he plans to take revenge by walloping a thin man with a plank?

So my petition would demand compulsory screening of such comedy classics– at least once a week, every week – as a condition of the BBC’s charter renewal.

They would be worth the licence fee on their own.