Comedy Genius

Pythons join Frank Muir, Connie Booth and Willie Rushton celebrating the Guinness Book of Records.

Black music hall stars Scott and Whaley perform stereotypical minstrel routines in blackface in this 1937 touring revue.

Ernie tells Eric to ‘be wise’ and not drive home after their Christmas party

Innuendo-laden crime caper, a star vehicle for Manchester-based drag queen Bunny Lewis

Arthur Lowe is hilarious as a hen-pecked husband in this cheeky seaside-set comedy, shot in Margate.

After Martin Stevens is killed in a car accident he finds himself in a waiting room, pending judgement.

A defiant London family fights valiantly to retain their South Bank home in this cheerful comedy set around 1951's Festival of Britain.

A star is born in this effervescent musical comedy that moves between Billingsgate Fish Market and the glamour of the film world.

A man goes ape when his boss' performing monkey is impounded by creditors.

Drake muses on why he carries two pairs of trousers - just in case he has a hole in one.

Roy Hudd plays to a sell-out Princess Theatre.

Terry-Thomas talks effusively in this interview about his return to the stage. 

Big-hearted Arthur Askey gets to grips with dentistry in this silly little advert for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

Local yokel comedian who delivered dialect and dialogue wherever he went.

Bob Hope disembarks the Queen Elizabeth II in Plymouth.

A Tyne Tees Television comedy romance is a forgotten gem from a 1960s decade of radical urban change in Newcastle.

Sample smutty suburban hijinks of an ultra-low budget kind in this shamelessly seedy 1970s sex comedy

A man encounters all sorts of strange places and people when he goes out for cigarettes

Scots comedian Chic Murray stars in this gentle comedy short about a man who inherits his uncle’s boat

Black comedy about a teenage idealist who builds a bomb, hijacks a lorry and sets off on a most peculiar mission.

An experience many of us will be able to relate to, though there wouldn’t have been someone around to film the comic consequences.

AWOL for more than half a century, but now back on parade, this cheery army comedy is a showcase for variety star Hal Monty and a young Max Bygraves.

Brandy-smuggling locals resist government interference in this Ealing-esque comedy, filmed on Romney Marsh

Deliciously dark psychodrama about a Docklands bus driver who turns his family home into a second Noah's ark.

British comic Lupino Lane stars in this surviving fragment from one of his earliest films, a slapstick school romp

Lupino Lane comedy filmed in London before he became a Hollywood legend

Messy slapstick comedy featuring an ineptitude waiter, presented by Colchester Cine Club and starring an ensemble cast of club members.

Laughs and thrills come thick and fast in this Edgar Wallace comedy-thriller with a hair-raising car versus train chase.

Surreal comedy for a post-apocalyptic landscape.

Surviving footage of the first sound version of Arnold Ridley's famous railway station comedy thriller

The first film adaptation of Harold Brighouse's Salford-set play, humorously depicting the travails of a dipsomaniac cobbler.

The Bamforth Company translate their saucy seaside postcard humour into film comedy.

A mischievous youth causes havoc with his amphibian-assisted antics.

Hilariously shambolic parody of an equestrian stage smash, by the prolific entertainer Pimple

The mischievous Pimple takes to the bottle in this entertaining comedy

This daft comedy stars funny-duo Fred and Joe Evans in a battle to secure an inheritance from an insane uncle.

A henpecked husband plots revenge on his boastful bachelor friend by marrying him to a seemingly meek girl who turns out to be anything but.

A beach flirtation gets complicated when a thief makes off with a woman's shoes in this fun comedy

A jaunty song with a pantomime air is matched to its original audio recording in this Vivaphone film from Cecil Hepworth.

Irrepressible sister act Tilly and Sally throw a party - of sorts - in this chaotic comedy caper.

Tilly and her sister Sally cause chaos when they visit an elderly, bedridden neighbour

At the seaside, a young Edwardian lady is pursued by three suitors, but which one will win her hand?

Cut! An aspiring thespian runs amok on a film set in this slapstick silent comedy.

WWI conscription has whisked away all the young men, leaving the girls so man-hungry that even Tubby looks attractive!

Newlywed Tubby fancies another man's typewriter and ends up in hot water with his new wife

Early comedy in which a cruel joke is played on an old maid

A snatched kiss in a railway tunnel, played by real-life married couple GA Smith and Laura Bayley

A showcase for GA Smith’s patented Kinemacolor process, based around a suitably colourful subject

An inventor develops a magnifying glass that can see though solid objects, but when he uses it on his family it proves more curse than boon...

Bizarre comedy in which an overfed diner has a peculiar dream involving a spectre and magical gloves.

A bungling bumpkin fails at a number of jobs in this slapstick comedy - before he finds his true calling.

Cecil Hepworth’s Vivaphone film features Hay Plumb singing George Robins’ optimistic 1906 ditty.

Silent British star Alma Taylor finds love in this dramatic short, which packs forgery, blackmail and romance into its 15-minute running time.

Will Hay and M’lita Dolores play a pair of spoiled brats squabbling over a menagerie of mechanical toys.