Nancy Banks-Smith

I used to like Never Mind the Quality very much. Was I so much easier to please or is this show much inferior? It seemed to rely on cries of "Knickers" and "Stuff that in your carburettor." and jokes that telegraphed their arrival early enough to allow you to duck.

The show was like a victory V. sign, meant to be both cheerful and obscene at one and the same time. But there was one monent when Frankie Howerd proved he is the best, the only stand-up solo comic we have. Like Marie Lloyd he took a tear jerker for a tenor and made it unbelievably funny and filthy. It was a total demolition job on the song, and "I did it my way" will never be the same again.

It's not at the seaside is it? Leeds, that is. I'm sure it wasn't once, but perhaps erosion has set in. The humour of "All Our Saturdays" (from Yorkshire) is at sea level. Or, you could say, low. It's also broad, though the word hardly covers its hip measurement.

There was something missing during "On the Buses" (LWT) besides the regretted absence of Michael Robbins, that is, who is written out of this series. I finally isolated it to the smell of ozone. This was not a bus, it was a boarding house. Precisely the kind of humour which traces its descent from postcards and piers.

I would have guessed that there was no written script for "Whoops Baghdad" (BBC1) but there must have been because the cast kept forgetting it. And you can't forget what isn't there. Can you?

In Elementary My Dear Watson (BBC1) a Lady of Title endeavoured to distract a rattlesnake by engaging it in conversation. The snake, tactful as ever, rattled back but when she lied to it about her age, it bit her. Quite right too. But that was all I found right about Elementary My Dear Watson.

In It's All in Life (ATV) Read did acute impressions of a drunk, the wife of a drunk, the policeman who arrested the drunk. I liked them all. I always did. This is, astonishingly, called a brand new series, and if so, it is proof positive of reincarnation for I have somewhere, sometime, heard it all before.

Morecambe and Wise, The Royals of Northern humour, have also started a new series on BBC1. People point with pride to the stage knights and dames who are now delighted to be guests on the show. Never the last to point the finger I must mention that Tony Snowden does the sets. You will see a specimen of his work in this week's Radio Times.

The Last of The Summer Wine by Roy Clarke in the Comedy Playhouse Series struck me as a delightful straight play. And I could have wished that something would strike the woman in the studio audience, who thought she was watching The Comedians.

It's far easier to write about poor programmes than good ones, just as it's easier to make them. The temptation to trampoline up and down on "The Black Safari" (BBC2) is almost irresistible, but that is precisely where the programme went wrong.