Humphrey Lyttelton

ISIHAC: how radio's smuttiest show has beaten the censors for 50 years

Innuendo, tone-deaf singing and dreadful wages: as the cherished BBC panel game celebrates its half century, we look back at its finest moments - and its future.

ISIHAC nearly went to TV with younger panellists

Barry Cryer reveals that the BBC radio show almost moved to television.

DVD review - Morecambe and Wise: Two of a Kind

We all remember the classic Morecambe and Wise sketches and Christmas specials that they made for the BBC, but their first TV success was arguably over on commercial television, at ATV in the 1960s. This series was Two of a Kind and it spawned some of the double act's most famous routines.

Radio comedy's constant innuendo makes me wince

I've been listening to Clue since it started, back in the Seventies. I have often wept with laughter at it but I think it reached a natural end when Humphrey Lyttelton died in 2008. Radio 4's then controller, Mark Damazer, thought otherwise and with reason. He noted how newer listeners to Radio 4 love it. New listeners, younger listeners are what every network controller wants. So it's probably irrelevant that, to me, Clue now sounds grubby, knowing, well-thumbed, heavy-handed. I hated Susan Calman on Monday singing Horny to the tune of Leaning on a Lampost. I winced at the lists of rude sweets. The studio audience loved it all. The very word "cock", even in blameless context, sent them into gales of laughter. Baffling.

Barry Cryer: ISIHAC is best when it's falling apart

As the long-running Radio 4 show returns, the stalwart panelist celebrates the late Humphrey Lyttelton, his replacement Jack Dee - and the importance of silliness.

Gloriously groan-worthy gags from 40 years of ISIHAC

The late Humphrey Lyttelton once wrote: 'As we journey through life, discarding baggage along the way, we should keep an iron grip, to the very end, on the capacity for silliness. It preserves the soul from desiccation.' No radio show has aided that cause greater than I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

Humphrey Lyttelton's son claimed illegal benefits

The son of Humphrey Lyttelton, the late jazz musician and radio broadcaster, claimed thousands of pounds in benefits despite inheriting a share of his father's estate.

There is no better place to seek out a little light relief than I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, now incredibly in its 55th series. Doubtless many long term fans of the show who still pine for Humphrey Lyttelton as chair, but Jack Dee does a fine job, especially when he throws in a few dry asides.

In the first instalment of the new series, recorded at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall, regulars Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor were joined by relative newcomer Marcus Brigstocke, the latter managing to impress his cohorts with a classy move during a round of Mornington Cresent. With Colin Sell at the piano and Samantha on the scoreboard, the endless nonsense and wit was still laugh out loud funny, my favourite moment on this occasion being Summertime sung to the theme from Jim'll Fix It.

The main problem I have with I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue as a reviewer is that it's impossible to review such a classic show, one which has been on the air for nearly 40 years. What can you say about it that hasn't been said already?

Well, let's start off with the guest panellist - first-timer Marcus Brigstocke. Out of the four panellists (the others being the three regulars, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden), he seemed to have the funniest bits. Maybe he was the funniest, maybe it's the show's view to make the guest look the funniest, I don't know. However, he did seem to have many high points in the episode I listened to - his rendition of "Common People" to the tune of "If You're Happy and Know It", for example, was great.

There was also the introduction of a new round in this show called "Heston's Services". This was akin to similar rounds such as "Book Club" and "Film Club", in this case coming up with meals that Heston Blumenthal would serve at a motorway service station.

The other main component of the show, of course, is host Jack Dee. I know that there are lot of people out there who won't accept him as host and won't be happy until Humphrey Lyttelton is exhumed, reanimated and blowing his trumpet in the chair for all eternity, but Dee does a good job as far as I'm concerned.