Parenting & Family Quote by Colin Mochrie

Mochrie’s confession isn’t really about being a hardcore TV kid; it’s about crediting the machine that built his comedic reflexes. “24 hours a day” is an obvious exaggeration, the kind comedians use to signal: I’m not testifying, I’m telling you what it felt like. The line smuggles in something more specific than nostalgia: television as apprenticeship, not pastime.

Naming The Dick Van Dyke Show and Fawlty Towers is doing cultural self-portraiture with two brushstrokes. Both series are precision instruments: ensembles built on timing, misunderstandings, and escalating chaos that still obeys an internal rhythm. If you know Mochrie’s work - improvisational, fast, alert to the smallest shift in status - these picks read like a blueprint. He isn’t praising “comedy” in general; he’s identifying the kind of comedy that prizes choreography over punchlines, where a raised eyebrow can be a plot twist.

The phrase “make me laugh and are therefore my favourites” is telling in its simplicity. It rejects prestige, theory, and taste-signaling. Laughing is the only metric that matters, a performer’s metric. There’s also a subtle transatlantic lineage here: an American sitcom’s warm domestic snap paired with a British farce’s brutal, claustrophobic implosion. Mochrie, a Canadian comedian who thrives in the in-between, is pointing to the sweet spot he inhabits: genial and sharp, accessible and ruthless about timing. The subtext is gratitude - and a reminder that comedy is often learned the way musicians learn standards: by watching, repeating, absorbing.