When I started school in the 1950s everyone had a repertoire of jokes. It was how we made friends, amused ourselves and enjoyed life. Laughter was everywhere. A good new joke would go round the school like wildfire. As I got older the jokes became more risque. Also it became clear that the best Jewish jokes were told by Jews, the best homosexual jokes by homosexuals, and the best Pope jokes by Catholics. Older still and many jokes became deeper, more subtle and philosophical. And then there came the pub, for jokes it was like the schoolyard on steroids. People were constantly laughing and many developed mini standup routines. We British had a global reputation for our sense of humour.

And it was the golden age of broadcast comedy that was truly funny. Hilarious.  The Goon Show, Monty Python, Morcambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies, The Goodies, Charlie Drake, Last of the Summer Wine, Only Fools and Horses, Tommy Cooper, Kenny Everett, Dad’s Army, Tony Hancock,  Fawlty Towers. The list goes on and on. All vastly funnier than anything on television today. None of which would even be made today. And none of which were political, it was seen as being illegal under the BBC Charter and broadcasting laws for light entertainment to be political. The best the BBC can do these days is the utterly inane Mrs Brown’s Boys, which really scrapes the barrel.

Comedy was a rich and highly varied mainstream of our culture. Pun, satire, facetiousness, banter, parody, sarcasm, blendword, wisecrack, conundrum, barracks humour, hyperbole, Freudian slip, innuendo, caricature, irony, gallows humour, deadpan, farce, nonsensism, burlesque, spoof, slapstick, toilet humour and more.

The rot set in when broadcast comedy became political. Spitting Image came in 1984 and satirised all politicians. And then came Ben Elton who was rabidly left wing, despite being a big fat capitalist himself. That opened the floodgates to virtually all broadcast comedy being left wing propaganda. And not really funny.

Then it got worse. Not content with huge left wing political bias the BBC became Cultural Marxists. So we had the despicable evils of political correctness, multiculturalism, identity politics and social justice forced upon us in every programme. And comedy ceased to be funny. At all.

This also permeated over into real life. It became unacceptable to tell a Jewish joke in the pub. Then it became criminal, as a thought crime. We are only allowed to say stuff that is politically correct now, which precludes most jokes. A huge amount of richness has been taken out of our lives. British culture and heritage has had a limb amputated. Which is what the Cultural Marxist want as they try and beat us down into being unthinking drones for their dystopian post democratic world.