I’m less than enamoured by the list of funniest British comedians produced by Reader’s Digest (who are natural arbiters on this subject).

I’ll let Tommy Cooper alone at the top (although I wouldn’t have ranked him so high), but Peter Kay second? Looks like a typical example of these polls where people just put down the person they laughed at on TV the previous night.

Chubby Brown at 7? Jim Davidson at 13? And yet, given that the likes of Benny Hill and Les Dawson got on, no sign of Frankie Howerd or the Two Ronnies. No Hancock, no Barry Cryer, no Graeme Garden. David Jason isn’t even a comedian.

Cleese is ridiculously low down the list, and there is a painful dearth of alternative comedy, however mainstream it may be now. No to Paul Merton and Harry Hill but yes to Freddie Starr? It’s just not funny.