I had a pair of Mr Pastry braces when I were a lad. I'm guessing this is where George Lucas got the idea for the Star Wars merchandising juggernaut.

This may be old hat to others, but I didn't know it...
According to Wikipedia, Richard Hearne "...was offered the starring role of the BBC series Doctor Who after the departure of Jon Pertwee, but a disagreement over his interpretation of the role (he wanted to play the Doctor as Mr. Pastry) led to the invitation being withdrawn by the producer, Barry Letts."

just watched the clip and said "that's not funny". She's right - he never was. And watching him again now just makes me think of The Fast Show's Arthur Atkinson.

..and your daughter are wrong.
Sorry, but much of what people find funny these days. (and I include much of The Fast Show)I find tragically the opposite.

..it wasn't meant to split your sides, just to give you a smile and remind you of long gone days.

But the *idea* of him is funny. The idea of a man who became a byword for clumsiness is an immensely useful idea. I got a laugh on Twitter the idea for pointing out that in the play-off for the British Open Tom Watson was playing like Mr Pastry.

Didn't Viz once have a character called "Sammy Smalls - He Runs Into Walls". You didn't actually have to see the strip to get the gag.

...as I have absolutely no idea who "Mr Pastry" is

...when I was 9, I took my 6-yr-old sister to see a double bill of "Davy Crockett - King of the Wild Frontier" and a Mr Pastry film. I was under strict instructions to bring her home if she found Davy Crockett frightening. She sat through that completely unmoved, then howled the cinema down the moment Mr Pastry appeared on the screen (good job we saw the main feature first). So not universally loved, even in his heyday! He didn't do much for me, but this is amusing in its gentle way - and blessedly short.

..how funny people will find The Mighty Boosh, Peep Show or Little Britain in 50 years time.
I find them all a bit tragic even now.

I was looking for a clip of another "comedy filler act" Billy Dainty and came across this...

I remember a friend trying to amuse my kids when much younger by showing a video of Laurel & Hardy's Brats - the one where they also play their own children - and they laughed hysterically throughout. Many of these filler acts are aspiring to achieve the same reaction to their slapstick humour.

Unique in their abillity to make people of any generation laugh. Genuinely timeless, unlike any of your Pastries/ Daintys/ Walls.

Has anybody ever suffered from a change of taste more than Charlie Chaplin? Perhaps the first world-wide star, internationally popular in a way that no-one had been before. Yet now he is very much a minority taste.

You could compare him with The Beatles in terms of fame and changing the form he worked in. But the Beatles started recording 47 years ago, and there is still a genuine widespread interest in them, (not just in The Word). If you look at Chaplin, there was about 47 years between the start of his career, and when The Beatles started out. I don't remember that time, but I'd guess even by then that Chaplin had become a historical figure.

Is it just that tastes in humour change more quickly than in other fields?

Back then, virtually all variety comics had something in their act that they hoped would - rather like a corporate logo today - instantly be identified with them. So, Max Miller had his sequined suits and oversized trilby, Mr Pastry had his oversized morning suit, Sandy Powell had his oversized arms (which still make me laugh - yes, I really am that pathetic), Hylda Baker her oversized silent friend Cynthia (a stonefaced man in drag), and Max Wall had his oversized boots. (Are you starting to notice a pattern here?) Even into the '60s and '70s, Tommy Cooper had his fez and Ken Dodd his "tickling stick".

The trademark costume, prop or "bit of business" usually went hand in hand with a catchphrase, the more random - as the youth say - the better (Word icon Kenny Cantor's universally loved "Oh, you are kind" being a perfect case in point).

In that respect, bizarre though it may seem, Bernard Manning was a true comedy revolutionary in that he was the first comic to become nationally famous with no catchphrase and no characteristic "business"; he was just a fat Manc bastard who stood there and rattled off jokes.

Bernard Manning was the Sex Pistols of comedy. Oh, yes.

Where's me washboard?

A real contradiction; on paper a very, very funny man ('They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian; well, they're not laughing now. . .') but somehow his delivery didn't endear him or his material to people on Tommy Cooper lines. Consequently, he is remembered as the 'comedian's comedian'. Oh dear.