Comedians always like to claim that they started making jokes after childhoods made harsh by poverty; that at a formative age they were tormented by appalling cruelty and neglect. Griff Rhys Jones had to leave Wales at the age of six days, for instance. Nevertheless, the Chaplin family could afford a maid in Kennington.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £16.00, Tel: 08430 600033. Roger Lewis is the author of The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Charles Hawtrey and Growing Up with Comedians.
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