Dick Clement

I'd like to say, and who shall stop me, how pleasureable the series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (BBC1) has been. How funny and true. In spite of Keats, funny is the truth and truth is funny and that is all script writers need to know. Or nearly.

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.