Dale Winton

Those we have lost in comedy, 2018

It had already been a bad year for comedy industry deaths even before the late-breaking news that legend Dame June Whitfield had died.

The Valco staff are on tenterhooks as they prepare to wow their millionth customer with a special celebration - what better way to cash up a supermarket sitcom series than with a trolley dash? All it needs is a Dale Winton cameo and we'd be rolling in the aisles. It's hit and miss stuff but the grubby canoodlings of stacker Colin and checkout girl Lisa always raise a grubby smile.

There's a sad story from Richard Bacon: when he worked in McDonald's his girlfriend joined the queue for his till and dumped him when she reached the counter.

Of course, it could be complete tosh and the fun lies in the inquisition. As Bacon is on David Mitchell's team that means he's extensively quizzed by Lee Mack, backed by Clare Balding and a giggly Miranda Hart. And Balding is entertainingly cruel when Bacon reels off some facts about the cooking times of burgers.

Also, Dale Winton reveals how, as a child, instead of a comfort blanket or a teddy bear, he slept with a potato, while Hart insists she was a judge at the Identical Twins of the Year Award.

The News Quiz] (Radio 4, Friday) returned for a 75th series last week, its host Sandi Toksvig and contestants Dominic Lawson, Jeremy Hardy, Andy Hamilton and Fred MacAulay keen to get at what must be one of the richest current affairs harvests in living memory. As ever, Hamilton had the best lines, noting that the name of Libyan diplomat Moussa Koussa "sounds like an ABBA track" and comparing the all-party select committee responsible for grilling Rupert and James Murdoch to "a panel comprised of Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason, Dale Winton, Jim Bowen and Sooty". (Listeners were left to guess which MP most closely resembles a small glove-puppet bear.)

The format may now be as well worn and familiar as an old cardigan, but it's no less welcome for that.

Having always been immune to those Halloween episodes so beloved of US sitcoms - they always turn out to be rubbish, even if it's Family Guy - I approached Psychoville's Halloween Special with a certain air of trepidation. But this turned out to be a psycho marriage made in heaven.

Upholding the proud horror tradition of the portmanteau spine-chiller - separate tales only loosely interlocked at the edges - this Psychoville special played as both a sophisticated trailer for the much-anticipated second series and as a pumpkin-packin' thriller in its own right, perfectly timed to give every childish tap on the door an extra edge of menace.

Featuring the juicily demented star characters from the first run of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's macabre comedy, including the bonkers midwife and the mother and son who are way too close for comfort, the show oozed black humour like treacle with a set-up that delighted in ripping the mickey out of Most Haunted while putting the willies up you with the image of Dale Winton hosting such spooky shenanigans.

Electric shocks and dead babies abounded in a classy treat that had plenty of tricks up its sleeve, not least getting the balance between horror and comedy pretty much spot on. It confirmed Psychoville as a worthy successor to The League Of Gentlemen and you can't say fairer than that.