Now, a vile sense of humor can be the very best kind. So far as Ben's concerned, at least. Life can be black enough that you could only really combat it with even blacker humor.

And besides that, he often hid a smile around Claudia's Britney Spears of an aunt.

"Humor's not meant to be proper, I don't think," he said as he sipped his whiskey. "If it was proper, it'd just be normal, run of the mill life. Humor is when things get odd."

As for the question, he just shook his head. "Sometimes I forget that a lot of the classics don't make it here. He was a film comedian. The first one, you might say, back in the silent era."