Favourite classic film comedy team?

That is true, but I'm more focusing on 30s/40s film here.

Laurel and Hardy. Hands down.

A tough choice...but for me it has to be the Marx Brothers.

Laurel and Hardy had the better more polished act but the peak of the Marx Brothers - Duck Soup - is a far, far better and more ambitious piece of filmaking than anything attempted by L&H even at the height of their Hal Roach days. The brothers suffered later on from the sentimentality of the films they made later for MGM. Irving Thalberg insisted on more structure to their anarchic work and we get lots of films where there's a romance with the Marx boys as side characters - and tedious harp solos from, well, Harpo obviously. The Groucho and Chico parts hold up but if you want the Marx's unchained you want the Paramount stuff - Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, Monkey Business and Animal Crackers. I'd argue Laurel and Hardy never made one film as good as any of those four though Sons Of The Desert comes close and Way Out West and Our Relations are worth anyone's time. Their best work was in shorts like Towed In A Hole, The Music Box and my favourite, Them Thar Hills. They worked best in two or three reelers, honestly.

A bit like, a generation earlier with the great silent comics. Harold Lloyd's movies made more money than Chaplin or Keaton but they were much greater filmmakers than the crowd pleasing Lloyd. Keaton especially was an auteur 40 years before the term was coined. Anyone who hasn't seen Sherlock Jr must. It's a marvel not just of comedy but film. He was pioneering techniques in camerawork and stunting decades before others caught on. I won't even speak to Chaplin as his genius is almost passe to mention - there's a reason his films even now are cornerstones of the Criterion Collection and the BFI.

I know we're talking teams here (and if we're talking 30s-40s then where's Burns & Allen or "Road To" movies with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby?) but I think I'd have to reserve special praise for a genius who had the talent of a whole team - William Claude Duckenfied - better known as W.C. Fields. Anyone who hasn't seen It's A Gift, You Can't Cheat An Honest Man, My Little Chickadee, The Bank Dick or Never Give A Sucker An Even Break just has to or they're missing out on some of the best, most original comedy ever made. There's stuff in "Sucker" that is so post-modern and so ahead of the comic curve that it's still being done in the likes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Even his writing nom-de-plumes were amazing - Mahatma Cain Jeeves being a classic. Just....seek him out if you haven't already.