Quote: Marc P @ April 26 2013, 10:25 AM BST

I think it was a meta knob joke personally.

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A distinction I don't recall Mr Elton making when he was excoriating comics of a previous generation. Perhaps it's some sort of irregular verb, "he's a crude bigot, you're an affectionate parody, I'm making meta-jokes". Jim Davidson should try it.

I'd not really thought of gentle studio sitcoms as a laboratory of meta-humour, but I suppose it's possible to sneak the odd one in. Dear old Ben, slipping his meta-knobs around the back way, eh?

That's because they weren't doing it. And you are talking about thirty years ago. Peoples' tastes change sometimes in music for example. Ben Elton has been writing nob gags since The Young Ones, by the by:

Mike: What's two foot long with a big round head?

Helen: Don't know.

Mike: No, nor do I, but I keep finding it in my cornflakes...

Nothing wrong with a good knob gag. Meta humour is just another word for knowing wink to the audience, nothing new here.

Here's another 'gag' that had sledgehammer subtlety.

'Are you a big man?'.......'Yes. I am a big man'.

It seemed Elton didn't think that was enough to constitute a gag (albeit a cheap, childish, deeply unfunny one) but he also had to have Mina Anwar quickly stare southwards in case you still hadn't understood this already not exactly complex 'joke'.

At least in How I Met Your Mother when Lily kept going on regardless and all suggestively & unsubtly about Marshall's 'package' in one episode it was done in a knowing way - like they were having fun with the double-entendre and deliberately milking it for all its worth in an ironic way (in a way that's like "Yes we know we're just doing a cheap, sexual double entendre gag but you probably haven't heard it done before with the word 'package' - plus we're an American show and double entendres are usually a very British thing").

Marshall: Nothing has changed, okay? I still want to help the environment. I just thought that maybe I could make some money for a few years. We could buy an apartment, send our kids to good schools. You could quit your job and focus on your painting. I know that you say you don't need it, but... I love you and I want to give it to you anyway. I want to give you the package.
Lily: The package? You've already given me the package. You've got a great package, Marshall. I love your package.
Marshall: Lily, you are the most incredible woman I know. You deserve a big package.
Lily: Your package has always been big enough. You may not realize this Marshall Eriksen, but you've got a huge package!
[Marshall turns around to see a hot girl nearby eyeing him and smiling fiendishly]

The laugh was entirely on Mina Anwar's reaction and the way she did it.

Although the audience was already laughing like drains on the initial utterance of 'Are you a big man'? What also ruined it is that Haig/Gerald was replying and re-using the double-entendre back at her in a not exactly naïve, unassuming and deadpan way...which you think he would. It's like he was struggling not to laugh.

How has comedy come to this?

It's the same joke as your package joke. You like the execution of the one but not the other. But it is the same joke. The audience laughing is entirely a different matter. The humour is all on her performance, as in most comedy it is the reaction that is funny.

14 mins was enough for me.
Take out the knob gags and stick it on CBBC.
Atrocious.

But it must be the British factor that makes the 'big man' 'gag' seem like such a painful subtle-free clunker - especially when you consider other gems of innuendo that Ben Elton had a hand in....

Edmund: Good. Well done. and now, returning to the real world: Do you have
a knife?

Baldrick: [nearly crying] I haven't got one there!
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Prince George: I know some fairly liberal-minded girls, but I've never penultimated any of them in a solar sojourn, or for that matter, been given any Norman tongue.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

George: Ah, Baldrick. Have you seen Nurse Mary? I need someone to post this
letter.

Edmund: Unbelievable!

So it seems something we can begin to find consensus on, is that the Ben Elton of the 1980s was a complete c**t to criticise others' perfectly legitimate - and very popular - forms of comedy.

Good good.

He did apologise over Benny Hill. Put his hands up as it were.

Yes, small consolation. But too little far too late IMO.

His obsession with the do's and don't of washing up hasn't abated in the last 25 years, either. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoE0SRHwIak

Well Wordsworth used to bang on about the weather all the time too. Talk about a pathetic phallus!

It's goes beyond so bad it's good into so bad it needs new words to describe how bad it is. Imagine all the great scripts the BBC ignore year in year out yet they accept this utter shit.

Recycling cast members from your previous sitcoms is pure laziness too.

Quote: Dr Sanchez @ April 26 2013, 2:35 PM BST

Imagine all the great scripts the BBC ignore year in year out yet they accept this utter shit.

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Even if they're not passing up on great scripts, they are presumably passing up on OK scripts. In the current climate of BBC sitcoms, who wouldn't settle for OK?