Norman Wisdom

Yesterday the people of the Isle of Man laid to rest one of our best comedians Sir Norman Wisdom. I had no idea for example that that a lot of his famous film scenes were impromptu, or that a lot of his stunts were really him. At one point he owned a brick company near Coventry and made 'Wisdom' bricks?!. We all new he was very talented, but above all he made me laugh!. There is an art and a skill to slapstick, and when we went through a wave of so called 'alternative' comedy in the eighties, slapstick was sidelined. In some ways slapstick could be called non verbal comedy, as with Norman and Laurel and Hardy, sometimes it was as simple as the expressions on their faces that would just crack me up!.
I am smiling like an idiot as I write this entry just thinking of Norman, his epitaph was apparently 'when I am gone, just throw me off the pier'.