Now that The Three Stooges are the subjects of a lavish new BD box set from Sony and have their own official YouTube site, is it time for John Martin to give you the lowdown on this beloved comedy institution. From soup to nuts? Why, certainly!

I am not expecting any points for novelty by kicking off here with the observation that comedy and violence are two sides of the same coin. Countless commentators have pointed this out before me, notably Lucio Fulci… and he would know, having directed assorted “video nasties” and (on countless occasions) the manic comic stylings of Sicily’s “Two Idiots,” Franco and Ciccio.

Although verging on cliché, the affinity between these two genres was completely lost on Mary Whitehouse and her pals during the mass hysteria over “nasties” which convulsed the UK during the early 1980s. Identifying Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) as “the Number One Nasty,” Mrs Whitehouse signally failed to “get” the film’s back comedy credentials and manifold allusions (including no less than 18 credits for “Fake Shemps”… and one “Car Shemp”) to the much loved sultans of slapstick, Brooklyn’s finest Three Stooges.

The arrival of Channel 4 in November 1982 (another significant date in the decline of Western Civilisation, by Contrary Mary’s reckoning), boasting afternoon screenings of The Stooges’ finest quarter hours, might have clued her in (and indeed did clue many UK viewers in) on the whole Stooge thing, but the episodes then broadcast exclusively concerned themselves (if I remember correctly) with the literally gob-slapping screen exploits of Moe, Larry and Curly. So what, exactly, was a Fake (or for that matter a real… or even a Car) Shemp? College Boy, huh? Spread out, read on and spread the word…

BIRTH OF THE STOOGES

Moe Howard (born Moses Horwitz, 19th June, 1897) hooked up with straight man Ted Healy (born, Ernest Lee Nash, 01/10/1896) on the vaudeville circuit during the early 1920s. His comic relief antics were soon reinforced by those of his elder brother Shemp Howard (Samuel Horwitz, born 11th March 1895 and discharged from the US Army during WWI on account of his numerous neurotic afflictions), fellow vaudevillian Larry Fine (born Louis Fineberg, 5th October, 1902) and such less well remembered figures as Fred Sanborn, Bobby Pinkus and Sam “Moody” Braun.

Line ups continued to evolve, as did the billing (“Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen”... “Ted Healy and His Racketeers” … and of course, crucially, “Ted Healy and his Three Stooges”) but the formula was simple enough, with The Stooges undermining the attempts of Healy’s self important character to present himself as a swell guy, often in the service of making time with Bonnie Bonnell, their interference rewarded with slaps and punches.