Rod Liddle is quoted on the timesonline this morning as saying:

"A few weeks ago, bored one evening and with a shortage of Hitler porn to watch on the history channels, I dug out Mel Brooks’s 1968 “classic”, The Producers, and watched that instead – anything for a late-night Adolf-fix. I seemed to remember it contained only one decent laugh. But I had quite forgotten the full panoply of sheer awfulness – the painfully witless jokes telegraphed five minutes in advance; the excruciating, ham-fisted acting; the histrionic gurning and mugging of Brooks himself. And, dear Lord, Gene Wilder. It’s by no means the worst film Brooks has made: check out Spaceballs or History of the World for an evening of perfect mirthlessness. The Producers is one of his best, in fact. Imagine that."

This was under the heading Why did Woody Allen stop making us laugh?
Heard the one about the comedy film-maker who just wasn’t funny any more?

The problem is that Mel Brooks wasn't even in The Producers, 1968, he was writer director of it. Liddle is probably thinking of Mel Brooks's 'gurning' in Blazing Saddles. He could not possibly have seen the movie as he said he did. Idiot. link