John Cleese

Although he wasn't a household name, John Howard Davies was a king to sitcom fans. The master producer and director, who died in August at the age of 72, had his hands on the tiller of countless classics. A short tribute featuring John Cleese and Rowan Atkinson is followed by three jewels of the genre: probably the best Good Life, the escaped convicts episode of Steptoe and Son, and the sublime Gourmet Night outing of Fawlty Towers ("If you don't like duck, you're rather stuck").

There's a reason his shows bear repetition: they are immaculately crafted. Take that Good Life: you'll rarely see better performances in a sitcom half-hour.

If a documentary's purpose is to makes you want to find out more about the subject then The Many Faces of Les Dawson was a huge success.

Dawson is one of those classic comedians that, annoyingly, I haven't paid as much attention to as I should have. That's a shame, really, because there's a lot to like about him.

The fact that he had to overcome the adversity of poverty and was selling vacuum cleaners for years and years until he became famous was new to me and an interesting segment of the show.

However, I think the thing I most like about his early career was that he appeared on Opportunity Knocks - and failed to win - but became just about a bigger success than anyone else who appeared on it. Even back in 1967, comedians were proving just how stupid and pointless talent shows were.

There were a few other fascinating factual nuggets in this show, too. The fact that Dawson's show Sez Les was the only TV show that John Cleese did between Monty Python and Fawlty Towers was a revelation. I never knew the two of them worked together until now.

Yes, he is manly known for mother-in-law gags and deliberately playing the piano badly, but there's much more to Les Dawson than that, as I've just found out.

'Twas the night before Christmas - John Cleese style

It was 2007 when one, John Cleese, set his Pythonesque sights on the traditional reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

There was so much more to Les Dawson than an endless stream of mother-in-law jokes; he was erudite, well read, a brilliant writer and a master of the comically surreal. John Cleese, who worked with Dawson on his TV show Sez Les in the 1970s, says of his old friend: "He was an autodidact, a very smart guy who was fascinated by words."

Dawson was a product of those unforgiving crucibles of a certain kind of comedy, northern working me's clubs. He developed what became the most beloved part of his act - playing the piano brilliantly badly - as a means of shutting up vituperative audiences. Colleagues, admirers and Dawson's widow, Tracy, contribute.

The nostalgic can wallow in plenty of retro-fare this Christmas, from old Morecambe and Wise specials, by way of Tommy Cooper repeats and this splendid profile of the poker-faced comedian who was still selling vacuum cleaners at the age of 38 when, in 1967, he had one last throw of the dice and entered Opportunity Knocks. Dawson's deadpan humour is appreciated here by John Cleese, Robert Webb ("it's quite easy to play the piano badly and not be funny") and Russell Kane ("some of us younger people did muddle him up with John Prescott"). Touchingly, Dawson stopped cracking mother-in-law jokes when his wife's mother died.

In terms of laughs-per-minute, this brilliant documentary profiling the life and work of the late Northern comedian Les Dawson is the one to beat tonight. Featuring many guffaw-inducing clips of Dawson in performance (sample quote: "I'd like to play you something by Mozart, but I won't because he never plays any of mine") as well as interviews with John Cleese, Jon Culshaw and others, it's a welcome celebration of one of the last century's most gifted comics.

Excellent clip/talking head profile of Les Dawson, progeny of the north-west club scene, and from his late 30s until his death, a mainstay of comedy and light entertainment on television. Proper stars like John Cleese and Robert Webb duly doff their caps, which is diverting enough, but the real fun is in the archive material, whether it be Les singing with Lulu, his magnificently satirical piano-playing, or his deadpan one-liners. Features many a reference to Dawson's equivalent of Moriarty, his mother-in-law.

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