Happy campers who are still raising a laugh

Review of Carry On Forever!

Return to a more innocent (but politically incorrect) time as actor Leslie Phillips hosts this glorious two-part appreciation of the Carry On films. Beginning in 1958 with Carry On Sergeant, the series burst on to the scene just as kitchen-sink dramas and their angry young men were tearing in to the Establishment, and Hammer horror films were putting the wind up cinema audiences everywhere. Cheap, cheerful and bawdy though they were, it's fair to say the Carry On's also reflected the changing social fabric of the nation, whether it was sending up sacred cows like the NHS or the Empire, or spoofing the western, the Hammer horror and the spy movie. If you are already a fan, this will be bliss: if not, then just listen and learn.

Radio 2 is celebrating British comedy so here's Leslie Phillips, the king of onscreen leer and chuckle, with a salute to the Carry On films which, for half a century, packed cinemas and, to this day, score highly with TV audiences. Was it because they related so closely to the events of their times (National Service, the NHS, holidays at home, holidays in Spain) or that their characters were archetypes as old as Chaucer's? Fellow Carry On actors reminisce with Phillips, clips from the archive recall those who have gone to the great sequel in the sky.

The ding-dongs behind the scenes of Carry On

Leslie Phillips talks about his new Radio 2 programme on the classic comedy films.