Felicity Kendal

Felicity Kendal reveals she had affairs

Felicity Kendal reveals she had affairs when she and couldn't be more different than her The Good Life role.

Felicity Kendal recalls Good Life actor Richard Briers

I try not to do regrets - I think they're such a waste of time - but I now have one. Not having kept in closer touch recently with Richard Briers, or Dickie as I used to call him, is a real sadness to me now that he has gone.

A look at the Silver Jubilee Good Life performance

At the conclusion of the myriad of events surrounding the recent Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebration, I started thinking back to the Silver Jubilee in 1977 when Her Majesty and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, attended a taping of an episode of The Good Life (Good Neighbors in the States), starring Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington.

From the Good Life to good time girl: Felicity Kendal

Deploying her husky and mischievous chuckle, Felicity Kendal laughs to recall her early encounters with prostitution.

Felicity Kendal: Barbara follows me like a good fairy

She's preparing for a classic West End role, but for many she'll always be their dungareed dreamboat. Rhiannon Harries meets Felicity Kendal.

Miranda is apparently created in a 1970s retro sitcom factory in which leftover bits of Penelope Keith and Felicity Kendal had been mixed up with some Cath Kidston wallpaper to create a kind of comedy mache, if you will - which was in turn left to dry inside a set made of balsa wood and tissues (though sadly not in front of a live studio audience) before viewers are invited to see whether their laughter makes it fall over or merely wobble a bit before righting itself...

Comedically speaking, Miranda Hart's size is apparently everything, so I fear she can never be considered funny outside of the context of her height, and nobody ever says that about Stephen Merchant.

Hart presumably came to terms with the innately sexist Tall = Funny equation (she's 6ft 1in) some years ago, so gags focusing on the idea of a thirtysomething woman who is clearly slightly surprised to be 6ft 1in are bound to feel a bit weird, as if Hart had only just swallowed the contents of the "Drink me" bottle and woken up all oooooh-errr!

But if you can accept the idea that a large lady tripping over cardboard boxes a lot, and being styled like Danny La Rue ("Oh Miranda, why are you dressed like a transvestite?!"), and having an unrequited crush on a handsome chef, not to mention Patricia Hodge as her elegantly trim mother, are intrinsically amusing, then Miranda is very amusing.

For everybody else, though, it's merely a cheap-looking sitcom starring a big girl who keeps being mistaken for a man ("Did he just call me Sir?"), despite not looking remotely like one. Kind of camp, sort of silly and a little bit sweet, but not, I think, quite enough of any of those to matter, Miranda feels like a throwback to an ancient, lost comedy era that is, if not quite pre-Cambrian, then certainly mid-20th century, pre-Cowell.