I automatically assumed the competition would be one of those television countdowns, from 100 through to the grand winner. But it turns out the poll has been organised by the charity Scotscare and that Billy Connolly, Rikki Fulton and Gregor Fisher as the string-vested street philosopher Rab C Nesbitt are almost the only candidates.

What, no Chic Murray? The man was a deadpan, dead-cert genius. And where is Stanley Baxter, surely Scotland's biggest comedy star if you think about all the light-entertainment budgets he blew. When Baxter wanted 5,000 glistening charioteers for a one-line gag, he got them.

Where is John Laurie wailing "We're all doomed!" after another botched Home Guard manoeuvre? Where is Ronnie Corbett free-associating from the folds of his giant armchair ? Where is Lex McLean?

Maybe we're not that funny after all. Scotland can be miss-is-as-good-as-a-mile when it comes to mirth. We are responsible for City Lights, Gerard Kelly's bank-based sitcom, not City Lights, the Charlie Chaplin classic. Similarly, Richard Wilson's Duck Patrol – set in a public park – will never be confused with Duck Soup, vintage Marx Brothers.

No, we must be funny. Funnier than Mike and Bernie Winters, anyway. When one of the dim brothers "died" on a Glasgow stage and his sibling popped his head round the curtain, the despairing cry rang out from the cheap seats: "Aw naw, there's two of them!"

Two Billy Connolly skits make the shortlist, but they're the wrong two. How can Connolly on drunks compare with 'The Crucifixion'? How is the Big Yin on singing at house parties superior to his first Parkinson and the joke about burying your wife bottom- up so you've got somewhere to park your bicycle?

Maybe, though, unintentional humour is where we excel. Perhaps it's time for us to properly recognise the high laughter quotient contained in Archie Macpherson's Weetabix weave of a hairstyle – not forgetting Jane Franchi's choker, Fyfe Robertson's deerstalker and Jimmy Shand's motorbike leathers.

Yes, we're funny. In fact, we're absolutely bloody hilarious, especially if we extend the remit to comedy in music ( Bay City Rollers, Calum Kennedy serenading sheep, Neil Reid singing ' Mother Of Mine', a dreadful bleat which must have made the old dear disown him). Extend it to comedy in sport – Scotland goalie Stewart Kennedy garrotting himself on a Wembley crossbar, long- distance runner Lachie Stewart's anti- smoking campaign, that relentless funster Colin Montgomerie – and we're world champs, no danger.