I'm watching Police Academy on the TV. This is one of the all time great movies, destined to grow and grow in esteem as the decades role by. It abounds with superb comic creations, none finer than Commandant Lassard, the magnificently un-policemanlike figurehead of the Academy, played by the sublime George Gaynes. "I'm trapped here?" – "Well yes, we all are."

And who could forget the black man (Michael Winslow) who imitates police cars and games machines and electric razors and horse noises? Then there is the amazing Tackleberry (David Graf) who draws his gun when confronted with a cat stuck up a tree, and who is distraught when "there was gunplay, and he missed it". Or how about the guy who whimpers wordlessly when his car is wrecked.? I never get tired of that bit. And as for the blond instructress, Sergeant Callaghan, played by the glorious Leslie Easterbrook. "Come at me with an imaginary knife." "Do I have to?" "Yes you do." Whatever happened to her? Still working away, it would appear.

The Crumpet Interest in Police Academy is played by none other than Kim Cattrall, she of Sex and the City fame.

Police Academy is the pinnacle of Steve Guttenberg's career. (If there are other pinnacles in this career, I am not aware of them.) His contribution to this movie is easy to underrate. He adds a welcome touch of charm in general and Gay Innuendo in particular (as when he inserts himself into the end of the Blow Job scene), without overdoing it.

The movie reviewing classes don't like this movie, because beneath and beyond all the mayhem and comic foolery and Chaucerian bawdy and the extraction of piss out of excessively militaristic young men with hair that is too short, it ends up endorsing the Rightness of Law and Order. Scum are Scum, and Good Upstanding Policemen are needed to control them. The movie ends with a grand parade, in which the entire caste graduates triumphantly.

The subsequent manifestations of Police Academy (Police Academies 2 to 6) tend to rehash the best jokes in the original one, and are not quite as great, although still good fun I think. But these have somewhat delayed the inevitable critical consensus to the effect that the original Police Academy is right up there with Citizen Kane, Some Like It Hot, Lawrence of Arabia, The Battle of Algiers, The Godfather and Carry On Up The Khyber.

And now, the Blow Job Scene …