Good one, Rob, although I don't think it's true to say that Hitchcock wasn't interested in jokes - there are plenty of them, especially in The Lady Vanishes.

I disagree with John about the capitals. Without them, it's all too easy to fail to spot the acrostic.

Thank you gentlemen. There are jokes in Hitchcock, it's true, but I was trying to suggest that he wasn't particularly attracted to comedy as a genre. He did try once - 'Mr and Mrs Smith', and pretty dire it is too.

The Trouble With Harry is a comedy, & so in my book is North By North West, a sophisticated satire of the Cold War spy movie. How can you be sure not to kill an unarmed man who is standing alone by the side of a deserted road? Hire a crop-dusting plane. Plus of course Psycho is one long Oedipal joke.

Yes it is more difficult to spot it. That was my point, Brian. 'North by Northwest', one of my favourites, is indeed extremely funny, and though I can't say I fell about when I first saw 'Psycho', it is indeed as Bazza says. There are jokes in a lot of Hitchcock's films.

Another draft it is, then.

Great one, Rob - I would suggest capitalize but not in bold...

Well, well. I knew it was overtly oedipal but I didn't realise it was a piss-take. Did anyone see the BBC4 programme about film music? He wanted the shower scene to take place in silence, no music. So... there goes the most famous clip of film music ever. Hitch, at a later date, showed his gratitude by sacking the composer.

That is what I meant, Sylvia. Not, I agree, what I said, but what I meant.

Twitching basket case & keen taxidermist Norman Bates is given lines like 'A boy's best friend is his mother' & 'Mother isn't herself tonight'. 'Mother' yells at Norman ''You put me in the fruit cellar. You think I'm fruity, do you?' (he does). A woman named Crane finds herself surrounded by stuffed birds. Hitchcock verging on Beckett, the doyen of dark humourists.

I never find Hitchcock films funny but there's a lugubrious oddness in many of them which makes me uneasy. He was fond of practical jokes (sadism by other means) which means he can't have been remotely pleasant.