Originally Posted by penfold

Clever piece of filmmaking. Those shots of Ollie looking at the camera, often fiddling with his tie, were deliberate breaks in the action to give the audience time to stop laughing from the gag preceding it, so the laughter didn't crash over the next gag, especially if it was a verbal rather than a sight gag.
They - well, Stan, actually - would then take a rough cut to a preview audience, and carefully time these laugh breaks, and re-edit the film to increase or decrease the breaks as appropriate to the audience reaction. Laurel was a highly experienced and serious craftsman before he teamed with Ollie...in fact, he was looking at a behind-camera career at the time, Laurel and Hardy was almost a last throw of the dice for him on the screen.

Originally Posted by Nick Dando

The Stan Laurel museum is in Ulverston, where Stan was born in 1890.

Stan Laurel - Biography

So that doesn't make him a Scouser.

Nick