Clive James

Over The Benny Hill Show (Thames) I prefer to draw a veil. Hill once paid me the compliment of parodying me on screen, a favour which precludes my pointing out at any length that his work is deteriorating to the merest self-regard and that if he radiates even an erg more complacency he'll go off like a pile of radioactive tapioca.

The only real difference between then and now, it seems to me, is that whereas Philip II drowned heretics in dark cellars, Lew Grade tries to make us watch Sunday Night at the London Palladium] (ATV). This week Tom Jones was on. He can tie his eyebrows together by crinkling his forehead and make his adam's apple go up and down by waggling his bum. Fantastic.

But it's the writing that stars: Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are plainly having a wonderful time raiding their own memories. Rilke once said that no true poet minds going to jail, since it leaves him alone to plunder his treasure-house. Writing this series must be the next best thing to being slung in the chokey.

But Seriously - It's Sheila Hancock (BBC2) featured Germaine Greer being funny, which is something I'm always keen to watch.

On Les Sez (Yorkshire) the stubby Les Dawson reeled off yet another string of one-liners about his wedding, at which the sunlight apparently burst through the stained glass windows and glinted on her father's Luger. Utterly deprived of viewpoint, Dawson's gags could have been written by an averagely gifted hamster, yet he's undeniably a treat to watch.

On Tuesday BBC1 played its autumn comedy ace My Wife Next Door, starring John Alderton and Hannah Gordon. The first episode didn't connect as cleanly as one had been led to expect. Alderton and Gordon play two young divorcees who accidentally take up residence next door to each other. Shades of 'Private Lives'. Shades too, unfortunately, of the brand of dumb-bunny domestic sitcom usually featuring Ian Carmichael being wonderful about the kids while Wendy Craig learns to boil water.