It may well be very sexist of me to say so, but in my admittedly fairly limited experience, men tend to ask more fundamental questions about life than women. I don't really mean earth-shattering questions that make us look at the world in an entirely different way (although I could probably make that case, by citing the fact that gravity, the theory of relativity, and evolution were most certainly not the discoveries of Isabel Newton, Alexandra Einstein, and Charmaine Darwin); I mean more everyday questions, looking at things we generally pootle along just taking for granted. This ability to look at things askew is what my wife tends to call my 'drivelling' (and she could probably make that case, by... well by just tape-recording me for ten minutes or so to be honest).

It's not just me, though (your honour). I remember one Christmas my father-in-law gazing at one of the table mats, depicting ye olde winter scene, of a shepherd and his flock out in the snowy countryside... and after a while he offered the opinion, "I bet that bloke's freezing." This way of suddenly looking at things and seeing them for the first time occasionally leads me to ask my wife such questions as: on the School sign, is it an older girl leading a younger boy, or is it a 1960s mini-skirted Mother leading her son? Her inability to answer this question, or at least to answer it with anything more helpful than a sentence containing the word 'drivel' (I believe it may also have contained the word 'divorce' actually...) led to me posing the same question on an Internet Message Board. Sadly that virtual-inquiry met with little success either, and in fact now that I've reminded myself of it, I realise that I still don't know the answer. Oh boy, I won't sleep tonight...

But all this is only leading me in a very roundabout sort of way to my subject. (Incidentally, a rambling, circuitous route seems to be a failing in many aspects of my life, as my wife and daughter will both gleefully attest to the time when when I almost totally failed to find Paignton and in the process managed to arrive at a place called Okehampton twice.) My drivelling/fundamentally-inquiring nature (delete as appropriate, depending on gender - no, yours) has got me to wondering just what exactly is a sense of humour? And for that matter, where do we get one from? It's all very well for Eric to tell Des O'Connor that, "with a suit like that you need a sense of humour" but what is it?

One of the most eye-opening experiences in my teenage life (steady on, it's not going to be at all racy - hello, are you still reading?) was when I overheard (aka eavesdropped) a conversation between two teenage girls sitting in front of me on the college bus. With the reminder that this is most definitely not going to be racy, let me continue by telling you that one girl asked the other if she had watched "The Good Life" the previous night. The reply (which was a shocker, to me anyway) was no, she didn't particularly like it.

I remain flabberghasted as to how anybody can not like "The Good Life". Personally I think it's one of the Beeb's finest sitcoms, and although my opinions about it have changed over the years (Jerry has moved from being the most boring character when I was 8 to being by far my favourite now I'm 33) I've certainly always enjoyed it. Indeed, my wife and I regularly trot out dialogue from the classic Christmas episode (sometimes we even do this at Christmas-time, which at least makes it seem slightly less freaky). "The Good Life" was, I think it's fair to say, pretty successful (the Queen liked it anyway, so that must be saying something - not quite sure what, but certainly something) yet even at its peak of, what, 12 million that would leave a good 35 or more million who weren't watching it. Even "Only Fools and Horses" which has enjoyed audiences of 25 million in its heyday, is still only being watched by around half of the population. On that basis, can anything truly be considered universally funny?

Even here at Curnow Towers there are big differences of opinion between me and Mrs C (and not just on the subject of comedy either). For one thing (and I hope you're sitting down) I can exclusively reveal (brace yourself Rodney) that Mrs C actively dislikes "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin" - yes I know, it's staggering isn't it. (Obviously she didn't tell me that until after we were married.) Me, I love it, but having said that, I can't stand Leonard Rossiter's other triumph, "Rising Damp". Similarly, I love Galton & Simpson's "Hancock" shows (which I'm sure has come as a great surprise to you) but their "Steptoe & Son" again leaves me cold. There are dozens of shows that one of us likes and the other at best tolerates (and please feel free to guess which of us likes which show - should you really have nothing better to do, you poor soul). "Cheers", "Dads Army", "To The Manor Born", "Only Fools and Horses" (sorry Si), "Blackadder", "Yes Minister" (sorry Lissa"), "Mr Bean", "Allo Allo", even "Fawlty Towers" (sorry An-- oh never mind, there's only so sorry I can be). And that's without moving onto list number two, comedy performers that we disagree over - Jim Carrey, Jerry Lewis, Rowan Atkinson...

This issue of what is or isn't funny cropped up this week after I did my Tommy Cooper impression to my daughter. Granted I'm no Mike Yarwood (who, to those of you too young to know, was what we had in the Good Old Days, before they invented Rory Bremner) but even when I'd told her who I was meant to be her reply was "Who's Tommy Cooper?" OK, that's actually pretty understandable, since he died 13 years before she was even born. But as I went strugglingly through the list of other names (Kenneth Williams, Eric Sykes, Jimmy Edwards) all of whom I would hazard a guess are at the very least known to you dear reader (yes, I mean YOU) I drew a blank with every one. Of course I didn't expect her to have heard of them, not really, but as well as being a sad indictment on the standards of education in this country today, it made me wonder whether they would make her laugh anyway.

When we were little, my brother enjoyed watching Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd... BBC2 at one time seemed to be forever showing those old black & white comedy shorts, certainly during School holidays, and although I used to watch them along with him, it was very rare that they really tickled me. In their heyday, of course they were regarded as legends, as All-Time Greats, timelessly funny... But I don't think history has necessarily proven that to be the case. They're still remembered I suppose, and yes of course, there are still lots of people who find them funny, but they've inevitably, and significantly, dated; and from a modern perspective they are in many ways (not least of which visually and technologically) markedly less sophisticated than some of the comedy we get today.

But then, that's a very shaky statement for me to make, since it brings us back to the question of what we as individuals find funny. If you don't rate any modern comedian from 1980 onwards, then Stan & Ollie are perhaps more, and still, to your taste. I don't much go for physical humour (Del's fall through the bar in OFAH is one of very few exceptions) but many do. I also don't particularly find a lot of modern comedians funny (oh heck, I'm starting to sound like somebody's maiden aunt now) what with their apparent (and, in my opinion, misguided belief) that chucking in swear words makes your routine more funny. My daughter is seven, and earlier in the year she seemed to think putting the word "poo" into every sentence would have us splitting our sides - if it didn't work for her then some geeky oick on the Paramount Comedy Channel has no chance.

So what, then, of my very own Next Generation? I don't know that she has developed an individual sense of humour yet - if she's watching anything on TV or on DVD then she laughs in all the places you'd expect a child to laugh, all the 'guaranteed hits' as it were (especially any gags that revolve around farting). Having said that, on the way back from Portsmouth recently (we went to a large outdoor show and came home, as one does, with mice) we listened to the first four episodes of "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" and she really enjoyed it. Her favourite character remains Slartibartfast, and while it would be easy to dismiss this as being entirely due to the fact that his name sounds like 'fart' I like to think that her discernment reaches a little further than that. When the new radio series started, incidentally, she managed to sit through part one while she had her tea, but concluded that it wasn't as good as the other ones - and despite all the wordy and worthy reviews posted in numerous telefantasy (radiofantasy?) journals, I think she has pretty well nailed it.

But Arthur Dent and Zaphod Beeblebrox and Slartibartfast (Slartibartfast? snigger, snigger) aside, what will Miss Curnow think when, as inevitably she will, she comes face to face with the be-fezzed Mr Cooper ("Unfortunately, Stradivarius was a terrible painter and Rembrandt made rotten violins")? Will she remain stony-faced and unmoved, as I would if I sat down to watch "The Great Dictator" or "Sons of the Desert"? I like to think she'd find Tommy Cooper funny, but it has to be said that quite often children tend to NOT like the things their parents like (sometimes purely as a matter of principal). If the all-time greats really are just that, then she will be bound to find them funny, but if in fact the people that I think are timelessly funny (Eric & Ernie, Victoria Wood) are actually just passing tastes, successes in their own time but ultimately transitory, then maybe she won't. I have to say that I find the thought of my littl'un sitting through the immortal (or not, as the case may be) Andre Previn sketch ("I was playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order") without even cracking a smile, really rather disturbing.

Well, I'm not laughing now...