Were Monty Python as funny as we remember?

Odd isn’t it, how memory plays tricks.

It was incredibly honest of Michael Palin, for instance, to admit that Monty Python was not always as brilliant as we remember.

True, it contained some glorious comedy gold, but that was buried in a heck of a lot of dross.

It’s just that the great moments, like the dead parrot and the funny walks stick in our minds and we discard and forget the dull bits.

Alas, I feel the same way about the Goons, to which I was totally addicted in my teens.

I even queued to watch the shows recorded (for younger readers I’d better explain that the Goons were radio shows in the 1950’s, which created stars like Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. No, please don’t depress me by saying you’ve never heard of Spike Milligan. Do you know I met a young person who actually asked me who Joan Collins was? It’ll happen to us all).

Anyway, my memory tells me that the Goon Shows were works of genius, surreal humour at its finest and funniest. But if I try to play a recording to my children, they shake their heads in incomprehension, and we all sit down together to watch Gogglebox instead (if you haven’t yet found it, Gogglebox, on Channel 4, is today what I thought the Goons were in the 1950’s, completely laugh-out-loud, fall-off-the-sofa hilarious. But Heaven only knows what future generations will make of it).

I even (now this may offend you) feel the same about Charlie Chaplin, moments of gold, hours of dross.

Yes, there are scenes in his films that survive as classics, like the way he made the bread rolls dance on the end of his forks. But I bet if you have a look at most of his famous films today you’ll end up stony-faced.

It could just be nothing dates as badly as comedy. The cooler it was at the time, the duller it seems now. Look at Shakespeare’s clowns. It’s difficult to crack a smile at most of them. But it could also be that we look back with a rosy glow on the entertainment we enjoyed when we were young.

The music, the jokes that seemed so daring at the time, everything our parents disapproved of, the stuff that nobody over the age of 25 ever understood. We remember it with nostalgia because it’s suffused with the vitality and the fun of our youth.

So maybe the answer is, best leave it there, locked up in our memories. Don’t try to unlock it and revisit the fun you had when you were young.

And perhaps it would be wiser not to go to the Python reunion, just in case. Which is just as well, they’re sold out anyway!