No, Perkins

With the television schedule full of D-Day ceremonies, and endless re-showings of The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan,I find myself looking for a little light relief.

I'm not sure this is it.

One of the earliest performances of the Beyond the Fringe skit "Aftermyth of War" took place at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1960. As you can imagine, there were far more World War Two veterans about in 1960, and, sixteen years after D-Day, these vets were still pretty young, vigorous, and easily annoyed by what appeared to be a disparagement of all their sacrifice and suffering.

The creators and performers - Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, the late Peter Cook, and the late Dudley Moore - maintained that the sketch was not meant as satire about the war itself, but of the way the war was portrayed in movies and other media.

This is the latter half of "Aftermyth", which contains all my favourite bits. Watch until the end to see the reaction of the audience, a few of whom are not applauding very enthusiastically. The dark humour of Beyond the Fringe was, after all, a bit ahead of its time.