No plot, no dignity, just badly-dubbed carnage

Cecily Hitchcock picks her Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites

I have never once loved something the ‘correct’ amount. Whatever I fall for, I fall for

completely; usually somewhere between deep affection and total, unshakeable obsession. This list isn't six tasteful favourites. Here are six things I fell for hard that taught me how to be really silly on purpose.

Freddy Got Fingered

I was five when I first watched Tom Green wank off a horse and shout ‘Look at me, I’m a farmer, Daddy!’

My brother had rented it from Blockbuster and left it in the VHS player for his innocent little sister to find, a common recurrence, and the reason I grew up with such 'eclectic' taste in film.

I don't remember understanding it, but I remember being in awe. I watched it twice before the tape disappeared one day. It's since been rated one of the worst films ever made by various critics. Maybe it is, but god, it's watchable.

Dame Edna: Live In Melbourne

My father introduced me to Dame Edna when I was four, while we lived in Melbourne, Australia. She was the first stand-up I had ever seen, and I was taken with her instantly, enamoured by an audience who clearly worshipped her.

I found her Live In Melbourne show in the early internet days. She'd single someone out, ‘hello possum,’ and within 30 seconds have them confessing things to a room of thousands, insulting and adoring them in the same sentence, somehow making both feel like a gift.

Austin Powers: Goldmember

Another VHS left in the player. Inside was Fat Bastard, and I decided with total conviction that he was the best thing I'd ever seen. Seeing him felt like I’d seen my prom date walk down the stairs.

It had such an impact that I declared myself Fat Bastard and marched around doing impressions for years. My parents found this hilarious and bought me a full Scottish outfit, kilt and all. Unfortunately for them, encouraging the joke backfired and I went on to dress as him for far longer than the joke was funny.

I'll never forget Austin and Mini-Me, undercover as sailors on Dr. Evil's submarine, sent behind a screen to give a urine sample. Mini-Me's arm angled so it looks exactly like Austin’s bizarrely mobile penis. Brilliant.

Dinner For One

One Christmas, Dad decided we were having a ‘Euro Christmas’, which is how I ended up watching the black-and-white German New Year's staple. An elderly woman has her 90th birthday dinner, served by a butler playing four dead guests, getting progressively drunker with each course. ‘Same procedure as last year?’ ‘Same procedure as every year.". Over 50 years later, still so hilarious.

Arrested Development

I began Arrested Development in my early 20s and fell totally in love. The family-centred characters resonate hugely with how I write about my own family.

Even the smallest jokes are family jokes. Nobody apologises, nobody learns… they regroup and do it all over again, slightly worse, next episode.

You need years of watching them enable each other to get half the jokes; callbacks stretch back entire seasons. Once you're in, watching them destroy each other, gleefully and repeatedly, is the best bit. Chaos but meticulously planned. Probably one of the most useful things comedy has ever taught me.

Takeshi's Castle

I loved this when I was little. People hurling themselves off collapsing bridges into muddy moats, dressed as bees and being thwacked by giant inflatable mushrooms. And yet they seemed to genuinely care… real effort, real disappointment, real joy, all in service of the most ridiculous obstacle course ever devised.

No plot, no dignity, just committed, badly-dubbed carnage.