By popular demand, I pledge once again to shatter your dreams and pee all over your cherished icons. The series continues, until everyone gets cross with me.

Tommy Cooper then - undoubtedly loved, even a "legend". Let's have a look at some of his "jokes":

I slept like a log last night. I woke up in the fireplace.

Sometimes I drink my whisky neat. Other times I take my tie off and leave my shirt hanging out.

Man walks into a bar. Didn't half hurt. It was an iron bar.

I had a ploughman's lunch the other day. He wasn't half mad.

Do you ever get the impression comedy in the seventies was slightly less sophisticated? Someone tried to bring down "The Royle Family" in the other thread, which is less a sitcom but a wry and bittersweet observation of family life. It's hard to imagine this sort of thing, which studies, captures and idolises middle class family life, can be even compared to what often passed as "comedy" previously - here, basically a bloke telling little more than Knock Knock jokes in a funny hat.

It was often said that Cooper's comedy would fail when delivered by anyone else - you can see the point, examples being the time he walked on stage with a tap on a string and brought the house down by saying "tap dance!". It seems, then, what we have is either an audience with a very primitive sense of humour, or a man who simply possessed an ability to make people laugh by acting dumb.

However, it's hard to see how his long-suffering family didn't completely tire of his moronic comedic routines:

"He once went into a tailor's shop to buy a suit, trying it on he asked a member of staff if he could take it for a walk round the block. When they consented he took a block of wood from his pocket, put it on the floor and walked around it before saying 'Fine. I'll take it.' There was also the time he walked into a library, asked for a pair of scissors and cut the bottom off one of his trouser legs before handing it to the librarian saying 'There's a turn-up for the books.' He continued this in his home-life with his wife Gwen reporting frequent instances of rubber spiders, snakes that sprang out of tins and books that burst into flames."

Rubber spiders? This man was voted the 6th best comedy act of all time recently.

In his private life he was also a rampant drinker and occasional wife batterer - I'm failing to see the joke here.

It seems to me that lots of acts that passed for comedy in the past wouldn't pass muster today, because although there is less of it, our very best comedy is a million times more sophisticated. Certainly with Tommy Cooper, looking back I see only a tin-pot magician and tedious joker, and not really a "legend" at all. Cooper is never repeated on TV these days - I'm thinking that there's probably a good reason for this.

Bring him down I say! Albeit uncharitably and by speaking ill of the deceased.

Just like that! Hilarious? Hardly. Or perhaps you can plead a case for the defence?

Si.