It might have been more reasonable if I had been horrified by some of Chaplin’s colleagues, such as the endless brutality of The Three Stooges, the perilous cliff-hanging Harold Lloyd, or the mutual cruelties that Laurel and Hardy inflicted upon each other. But no—these I found hilarious by varying degrees at the time, and only hapless eternal victim Charlie was a monster. Stan and Ollie were by far my favourites, and their amazing ability to escalate some small disagreement into a catastrophic disaster should have been a warning to us all.