HUMOUR is fun, it's also a helluva good weapon. Many pillars of a status quo survived the heavy artillery of portentous foes only to fall to the light infantry of humour. The rapier that draws blood and reduces the enemy to a clapped-out husk. Robert Burns wielded it magnificently against the unco guid extremists of Scottish Calvinism.

It's been used to deadly effect, politically, mostly by writers and caricaturists. Today's newspaper cartoonist follows this proud tradition. He generally has the last and best word on the absurdities of modern politics, followed closely by the likes of the marvellous Rory Bremner on television. Churchill could skilfully use humour. During a debate in the House of Commons he was interrupted in full flight by a Labour MP called Palings, who called out: ''You are a dirty dog.'' Churchill looked disdainfully over his half-moon spectacles and said: ''And you know what dirty dogs do to palings.''

Nye Bevan could wither an opponent with a humorously rounded phrase. His description of Herbert Morrison as a ''desiccated calculating machine'' was a humorous dismissal of a man he considered a manipulating apparatchik. The phrase was wrongly believed to have been directed at Gaitskell. Even if you disagreed with Hugh Gaitskell you had to respect the passion of the man. Morrison, on the other hand, was a desiccated calculating machine. Hated by right and left. When someone told Ernest Bevin that Morrison was his own worst enemy, Bevin retorted: ''Not while I'm alive.'' Morrison was Peter Mandelson's grandfather. Need I say more?

Humour can take many forms. When George Robertson was made Minister of Defence, a Scottish trade union leader wrote to congratulate him on his appointment, coyly observing that he would now sleep sounder at night knowing that George wouldn't declare war without a referendum. Humour must have a point. It can be a big point or a wee point but if it doesn't have a point it's pointless. Humour can illumine

reality, can make a point sometimes more succinctly and effectively than any other way.

But some public figures get seduced by the effect humour has on an audience. They start off by using it to make a point then making folk laugh becomes the point. But that's the job description of a comedian and the best of them make points. This brings me to Tony Banks, who was involved for years in London local government. He was on the Labour left. A humourist who used his comic gifts to advance an argument. Then he became an MP and over the years at Westminster Palace, that theatre of the absurd, he brushed up his act and became a fully fledged entertainer. The Tories loved him. He was always good for a laugh. The court jester became Minister of Sport and his appointment has now become a laughing matter.

Sport in modern society is not an optional extra but an integral part of our life. Without it the world would be a dreicher and drabber place. Sport like everything else has become intensely commercialised. The way things are going it looks as if the punter in the relative near future might be priced out of the live spectacle and forced to watch the telly if, that is, he or she can afford the inevitably escalating prices of satellite companies once they control the market.

Our major football clubs are becoming Scottish only in a rather loose geographical sense. Is this desirable? Is it inevitable? In the twenty-first century, with developing technology, fewer people will be able to produce more goods and services. Either we have small numbers working and the rest permanently unemployed or we share the work wherever possible through shorter hours and longer holidays. The 20-hour week will then be on the agenda. But we have historically been educated for work, not leisure.

I have mates who retired and died within a few years largely because they couldn't cope with all that leisure time. Go into a pub in Glasgow during the day and you'll see guys dragging out a pint and bored out of their skulls. It's a tragedy. Sport on its own isn't the answer, but it's part of the solution.

We need affordable access to sports facilities in every community. It will cost money. Where is it to come from? If the answer is private capital then the facility must show a profit to fund the private capital. Then we're back to charges, prices, and the danger of pricing people out of the facilities. When Tony Banks was appointed I thought this was his remit. To examine all these things. But all we hear are trite, not very bright, apparently off-the-cuff remarks that dismayed many who care for sport and its role in our communities.

Then came the appointment of David Mellor as a sort of football supremo and cheer-leader. My good friend Ken Gallacher has already given this matter justified haw-maws in the back pages of The Herald. Suffice to add that I don't give a monkey's what Mellor did in a Chelsea jersey with the lassie whose name I can't remember except it sounded like a Mexican bandit. It was probably similar to what he did to the British economy as a Tory MP.

Banks and Mellor are like Little and Large without the gravitas. Their appointments delighted the luvvies in London. They'll go down a bomb at National Sporting Club Dinners. Philistines with the readies they can't declare as earnings. Members of the Ronnie and Reggie Kray fan club. The Arthur Daley lookalikes. Showbiz panhandlers. Media morons. Banksie and Mellie, what a bleedin' laugh. Once again lads, ''I'm Burlington Bertie, I rise at 10.30 . . .'' ''Swing low, sweet . . .'' Gie's a break.

SINCE I started with a reference to Burns let me end with some lines of his. ''Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that, Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a cuif for a' that.'' And they're still cuifs. Hereditary and appointed cuifs. Labour life peers explain how they accepted to do a job only for the party. And the attendance fees, expenses, and the M'Luds? Forty years ago they were going to put an end to this feudal monstrosity. They're still there, so is the monstrosity. They like it.

I told you months ago that a deal had been done with some Labour MPs who would give up their candidacy in return for their ''elevation'' to the peerage. Their names are all there in last week's honours list. ''Sic a parcel o' rogues in a nation.''