With the proviso that all ratings systems are useless, there is still no useful way of disputing that Jacques Tati made more than his fair share of the all-time top ten film comedies, and that he himself never made anything better than Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, his near-silent beach-resort idyll of 1953. Those of us who were brought up on it know every sequence right down to the sound effects, which are often crucial, because although the film has almost no dialogue, there is a constant interchange between sound and action. Sometimes the sound provides the action, as when the “sproing” of the dining-room door is heard even when the door can’t be seen, and we know someone has come in or gone out.

After some thought, it seemed wiser not to try driving a wedge between television comedy and film comedy. They have always struck me as being continuous with each other, and on YouTube the continuity is emphasised, because the clips all appear in the same frame. On the whole, the television companies do a more thorough job than the film studios of keeping their treasure out of the public realm. For Charles Chaplin, there was a long period when his films were not available anywhere, not because the grip of his estate was tight but because it had loosened, and the mini-mogul who got hold of the rights set himself up as the keeper of Chaplin’s flame, and starved the market. As a direct result, Buster Keaton’s reputation overtook Chaplin’s. Today, Chaplin’s early short comedies are all over Youtube and it can be more easily seen that he and Keaton were neck and neck.