Alan Simpson

Steptoe to go Dutch

Classic sitcom Steptoe and Son is finally to return to the small screen - but this time in the more unlikely setting of Holland.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson have been writing together for 60 years and given us classic comedies. If they never write another word we are all in their debt. Radio 2 had a good idea to celebrate their partnership by recreating some of their old scripts for today's new comedy stars. The last in the series was Paul Merton in the role Tony Hancock made famous, The Blood Donor.

Actually, it was written for Arthur Lowe so, in theory, it should have passed easily into another voice. Unfortunately, it didn't. Merton sounded as if he were reading. So did June Whitfield's daughter, Suzy Aitchison, playing the nurse, the role her mother took so memorably 48 years ago. Why? It wasn't the script or the players. It's the art of good comedy production that's gone missing. The technical process has grown easier. The making of words into magic remains a tricky art.

This short comedy season, celebrating the 60-year writing partnership of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson by putting on a quartet of old scripts with new performers, ends on a bold note. Paul Merton recreates The Blood Donor, written for and performed by Tony Hancock in 1961, the classic where our self-important hero answers the call and gets a few surprises. It's bold of Merton to attempt this as, try as he may to present himself as a curmudgeon, everyone thinks he's a nice guy because, unlike Hancock, we feel we know his personality through panel games.

Galton and Simpson look back in laughter

Sitcom giants Galton and Simpson - who met 60 years ago this month - tell The Telegraph that there is not enough rubbish on TV.

But the Great Christmas Discovery came listening to the usual Golden-Oldie Comedy repeats - this time, two editions of the Hancock Half-Hour. They survive better, I suspect, than many others, though the audience laughter is irritatingly intrusive. But Hancock's persona is a genuine comic invention, and, listening again, I realised something else: Hancock is Basil Fawlty's Dad.

Variations On A Theme was the worst of the Galton and Simpson plays I have seen. And I think I have already described the second as the worst in the world.

In the first of the Galton and Simpson Playhouse comedy series (Yorkshire), Arthur Lowe was trapped in a broken-down Swiss cable car, and looked like some small but bellicose bird, resentfully sharing his perch with fancy foreign breeds.

Well, it was a Galton and Simpson comedy about three soccer supporters and three ballet devotees (and three weird sisters shrieking under the carriage seats). And you'd expect it to be better than it was. One for the lads.

Les Dawson starred in Holiday With Strings (Yorkshire), a Galton and Simpson fantasy made suddenly topical by the Court Line floppola. Les was off on a dreadful package holiday, flying with an airline so broke they were raffling the meals. The script was fairly average, but Dawson is easy on the eye: a roly-poly panic merchant who looks as if his whole life is booked with Clarkson's.

Galton and Simpson's Comedy Playhouse (BBC1) was black beyond belief. It had the Dr Who-ish premise of the world vacuum-cleaned empty of people. Except a mother and son in Hampton Wick.