“Push her down, son.”

The thing that separates Homer Simpson form his descendent Peter Griffin – and, indeed, most of the characters Homer has influenced, not all of which are bumbling dads – is that he’s a creature of pure sincerity. However shitty Homer’s behaviour gets, his genuine joy in everything he does is infectious, and his ability to feel deep shame over the consequences of his actions might not mitigate him continuing to do them but definitely make individual episodes compelling. Homer’s a fantastic product of chemistry between the writers, the animators, and voice actor Dan Castellanetta; the writers aren’t just writing the funniest thing they can think of and they aren’t just writing something a dumb person would say, they’re genuinely making the effort to present someone with comprehensible motivations doing something that’s actually brutally rational considering what he knows and wants, and Castellanetta brings total conviction to everything Homer says. This has the side effect of making Homer so much funnier, because it hits this perfect combination of logical and absurd. In that spirit, what are your favourite Homer Simpson line deliveries – where the joke (or perhaps serious moment) is so much better because of how he says it?

“It was a tumultuous time for our nation. The clear beverage craze gave us all a reason to live. The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek. And the domestication of the dog continued unabated.”

“Hey there, Blimpy Boy, floating through the sky so fancy… free…”

“Oh Kent, I’d be lying if I said my men hadn’t been committing crimes.”