The BBC Comedy department had loads of received wisdom to prevent unnecessary spend. Syd Lotterby (or Jimmy Gilbert possibly) always maintained that “No one ever laughed at a crane shot.” “But is it *funny?*” was the unfailing riposte to any form of profligacy.

As (dead-) parroted by John Cleese endlessly to the various Terries on location for the Python films. “How many laughs are there in smoke?” Which is a reductive way of looking at how you establish the set-up of a joke, but he never had the Oxford / Occidental gang’s imagination to see that…