No farewell to welfare - Gaetan Naudi

It is not so easy for a comedian to draw smiles, let alone guffaws of laughter, from acting out a scene where no words are uttered, where verbal communication is inexistent, where the message is left to the audience to figure out.
Having a knack for this artistic style gets you places, and some past entertainers succeeded in doing that: Dave Allen, Benny Hill, Mac Ronay… I can go on, recalling the comics of my heydays that had me in stitches with their silent yet expressive sketches. 

As I write, I am reminded of one clip showing the actor as an elderly butler who, responding to his master’s request for some ice in his cocktail, dutifully trudges with difficulty to the ice seller’s shop across the road.  He wears gloves.  
On exiting, he is lugging a huge slab of ice and, dragging himself forward as if on leaden feet, he lumbers back to the mansion.  The butler’s slow movements under a beating sun soon make the audience realise that the liquefying process of the glacial mass he is holding had started.  
After a journey which seemed to last an eternity, the poor manservant returns in time to pour the few remaining ice granules in his grasp into his master’s cocktail – there you...