That conversation came to mind when the results dropped into my inbox last week of "the most comprehensive study ever done into the UK comedy industry", conducted by the ticket agency Ticketmaster.
The stars of The Inbetweeners may have collected their exam grades and left Rudge Park Comprehensive for good, but Shane Allen, Channel 4's head of comedy, is still suffering from a bout of results day nerves.
And given the show's references to Billy Wilder's 1959 film Some Like It Hot, which itself references Shakespearean comedy, we are led to expect a more comprehensive romantic pairing-off than is delivered.
Here's a diagram from the best book that I've read on the subject, the comedy writer Dan O'Shannon's "What Are You Laughing At?: A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event": I won't go into the details.
Judge is writing comedy, after all, and good comedy often comes not from a detailed and comprehensive study of a subject's character, but in his foibles and ruffles around the edges.
These and similar techniques became part of the vocabulary of the sound comedy film, though as special effects and "color", not as the basis for the kind of comprehensive, non-naturalistic design achieved by Clair.
Adapted from a novel by Joe Dunthorne, this attractive comedy is a first-person narrative by the 15-year-old Oliver Tate Craig Robertss), a deeply serious, solipsistic, morally concerned comprehensive schoolboy and fantasist, blood brother to Holden Caulfield, Billy Fisher, and Adrian Mole.
Comedy, comedy and more comedy.
Eyre uses a working comprehensive school to root the film in reality and there are no dull patches in an enveloping tragedy with welcome hints of black comedy.
