Nancy Banks-Smith

One day somebody is going to drop dead with a heart attack on Beadle's About (LWT) and with any luck it won't be the victim.

This unflappable fowl walked on, as we say in the trade, during The Les Dawson Show (BBC1), wearing one of his old dress suits cut down, with the confidence of someone who has played the Glasgow Empire and lived to boast about it in bars. Les Dawson, who has precisely the same assurance for precisely the same reason, paid no attention whatsoever, as if passing penguins were a fact of life too common for comment.

Being on BBC2 Alexei Sayle's Stuff is more cerebral or something. It is intellectual yet bonkers, like a fast journey down a stream of consciousness on a rubber duck.

Sticky Moments with Julian Clary (C4) was so dreadful it was actually painful like mumps, though not as funny. I found myself turning my head aside out of delicacy or agony or hope of escape. Poor old Jules, a pretty if limited wit, seemed to be making the whole thing up as he went along. Again and again he begged, "Could we have a round of applause, please?" Since you ask, dear, No.

It suffered, and it deserved to, from following Snakes and Ladders (Yorks), a satiric series set in the near future with John Gordon Sinclair] (son of toil) and Adrian Edmondson (upper class twit). Due to a cock-up, rather literally, on the works computer they get on the wrong escalators. The toiler rises exhilaratingly to the boardroom and the twit sinks to the basement.

John Sessions: On The Spot (BBC2) was a wild career around his subconscious. Given four objects to improvise on, which only serve to inflame an overheated imagination, he swings from allusion to allusion with the agility of a gibbon in a forest fire. For us it was like being caught in a fusillade of Proust, Ibsen, EastEnders, and actors in various stages of neurosis.

Unexplained Laughter (BBC1) by Alun Owen out of Alice Thomas Ellis starred Diana Rigg enjoying herself as a journalist, withdrawn to remote Wales to lick the wounds of a love affair. Half the fun was spotting which reporter Miss Rigg had in mind.

Otherwise And A Nightingale Sang is a sentimental situation comedy that doesn't know when to stop. Almost everything on television is half an hour too long, even things that are only half an hour to start with.

Nothing is more likely to bring home to you the horror of the human condition than seven hours of concentrated comedy. It is like being shot to death with popcorn.

It was not often funny and, perhaps luckily, not often audible. To appear without your trousers is one thing. To appear without a script shows altogether too much naked courage.