WHEN I was young Sunday lunch was inextricably linked with humour.

As we ate our roast and two vegs, we listened to the radio and a weekly menu of The Clitheroe Kid, The Navy Lark and Round the Horn. We laughed – and sometimes choked – at these consistently funny programmes.

I listened again to a CD compilation of Round the Horn recently and it was just as funny as then. There was all the dodgy innuendo, the saucy observations – totally un-PC by today’s standards – and the wonderful characters like Julian and Sandy and the rest.

Clever humour has the capacity to endure. We still laugh at endless re-runs of Dad’s Army, Only Fools and Horses, Blackadder and Victoria Wood’s many characters. And it’s definiteloy fitting that Bury Council has now given permission for a statue of Victoria to be created in the town centre. She remains an entertainment legend.

We can easily recall iconic moments from some of TV’s best comedy from the last 30 or 40 years. No one can say four candles without the Two Ronnies’ sketch coming to mind and Delboy’s spectacular fall in the wine bar regularly crops up on Facebook footage to remind us all what comedy genius is all about.

Lord Blackadder and Baldrick have surely had some of the wittiest lines in comedy, thanks to a combination of the writing of Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton. It’s fair to note that some of our greatest comedians like Ken Dodd and Tommy Cooper owe as much to their writers as to their own presentation skills.

It’s true that comedy is very subjective but I do wonder if we will still be laughing at gems from today’s crop of comedians in the same way in another few decades. There are definitely some very funny men and women around currently, Michael McIntyre is extremely sharp and his observational humour very creative. Sarah Millican, Joe Lycett, Jimmy Carr, Mickey Flanagan, Rhod Gilbert, Kevin Bridges, Danny Bhoy, John Bishop and our own Peter Kay all have huge followings and everyone has their own favourite.

Comedy clubs and comedy nights are very popular and there is plainly a good living to be made by those willing to invest in good material and a real act. Unfortunately, there are still some comedians who believe that using filthy language is an acceptable substitute for genuinely humourous material.

I can’t be the only person who has sat through an alleged “comedy night” to hardly find anything to laugh at and plenty to endure in talentless individuals who believe a string of swear-words is funny in itself.

Comedy also unconsciously finds itself in everyday situations. I can still remember having to leave the Lamb Inn in Astley Bridge one Friday night as a pianist, in true Les Dawson style, played songs with wrong notes. In his case, he failed to notice the problem as he urged us to join in with “You all know this one”. Sing? We could hardly stand for laughing.