Time to give you some more smiles for my midweek post, I think. Hopefully you’ll find something amongst these to amuse you: they’re a mixed bag so I hope there will be at least one among them for you.

How about the genius that was Peter Sellers to get us started:

That was a scene from The Pink Panther Strikes Again, the fourth of five original movies in which Peter Sellers took the role of Inspector Clouseau. It was released in December 1976, just a year after the previous one, the first two having come out in 1963 and 1964. Sellers was a busy guy around that time, and starred in many other movies in the meantime. I have all five in my iTunes movie collection, and they are great at cheering me up if I’m in need of that. I had to watch this clip a couple of times to remind myself of all of the chaos he caused in just four minutes, having nearly choked with laughter at his entrance into the lounge.

I don’t know if the tv show Mrs Brown’s Boys has crossed the pond, but it has been a regular part of our schedules for a number of years. It is a show that divides opinion: many deride it, but I find myself crying with laughter at least a couple of times in every show, particularly those from the early series. Rather than play you a whole show, or even a whole scene, I thought I’d share a few very brief clips. They may seem puerile, but they make me laugh. Try this:

Or this:

You can tell from the look on the face of Rory Cowan, who plays the character of Rory Brown, that this was an unscripted addition to that episode. Having had this done to him many times before his apprehension is understandable, I think. Brendan O’Carroll, who writes the shows and plays Mrs Brown, knows he is on a winner in making Rory laugh. And in case you didn’t know, Jennifer Gibney, who plays Mrs Brown’s daughter Cathy in the show, is Brendan’s wife in real life.

Keeping an Irish theme going, in a way, with this next one, which comes with a bonus couple of extra minutes at the end:

Fascinating Aïda were formed in 1983 by Dillie Keane, who is the only original member left. Adele Anderson, the brunette, joined the following year but the third member, Liza Pullman, is a relative newcomer, having only been with them since 2004. They have a wide repertoire of songs like this, have won loads of theatre awards, and I would have loved to have seen them in concert back in the days when I could still do that. Dillie’s Irish accent in this isn’t entirely put on: though she is British and was born here, her parents were both Irish. According to Discogs the guy playing the bodhran is a chap called Alan Cox. I’ve found someone by that name who makes Christian music, so I don’t think it is him. There is, however, an Allan Cox (note the double ll) a renowned drummer who has played on records by a huge number of artists. Maybe it was him, but he is American and that’s where most of his work is done. So who knows!

When I ran the original version of this series a couple of years back, i.e. Saturday Smiles, one of the clips I shared was from one of the all time great British sitcoms, Only Fools And Horses. I wanted to play you another but it was incredibly difficult to choose just one. In the end I settled on this – it isn’t perhaps one of their best known scenes but it is typical of the brilliant humour, writing and acting that were hallmarks of the series:

For me, it is the mark of a good comedy if it still makes me laugh on repeat showings. That was part of an episode that first aired in March 1985, and it still makes me hoot with laughter. Come on, boy…

Having played you the song by Fascinating Aïda earlier I thought I’d close this collection with another, by one of the finest talents this country has seen in the past fifty years:

Sadly, Victoria Wood passed away in 2016 at just 62, but she has left us a wonderful legacy to enjoy. Wikipedia tells us that she was a comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director, who wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over several decades. As in this extract, which was part of the London Weekend Television series of An Evening With.. her live comedy act was interspersed with her own compositions which she performed at the piano. Much of her humour was grounded in everyday life and included references to activities, attitudes and products that are considered to exemplify Britain. I apologise to those of you outside the UK who may not have got all of those references in this one, but here are a few of them: Gardener’s Question Time is a BBC radio programme, which does what you would expect from its title. It has been broadcast weekly since 1947, and still gets around 2m listeners a week. The Spinners were an English folk music group, much beloved by the BBC for their sanitised versions of folk songs, and of course they had to wear chunky sweaters, because that’s what real folk singers wear, right? A Hostess Trolley is a device for delivering food to the table and keeping it warm – very middle class and Seventies! Tufted Wilton – a brand of carpet. The Woman’s Weekly is a magazine for women, quite possibly the least erotic publication of all time. It has been going since 1911 and still sells huge amounts each week.

That potted trip around British culture seems to be a good place to close for this time. I hope you’ve had some laughs and smiles from these, and I expect I’ll be doing this again soon. Let me know in the comments if there is anything you’d like to see from your own favourites: I’m very aware that I haven’t given you anything from outside these shores, apart from The Pink Panther, and there have been some great American comedy shows over the years that I really should feature, and a few from elsewhere too which have made it to British television. Maybe next time?

I’ll see you again on Sunday for some music. Until then, enjoy the start of your weekend 😊