John Sullivan (I)

Heartburn Hotel did not seem to endear itself to many as it did to me. The BBC's own continuity announcer still calls it Heartbreak Hotel. It is, however, co-written by John Sullivan, who also wrote Only Fools and Horses, so it is an egg worth incubating.

ITV creates a Dickens of a problem for the BBC

There was a chilly welcome on the shores of Lake Geneva for the BBC at the Golden Rose of Montreux TV Comedy Festival yesterday when ITV announced it had captured two of the corporation's prime assets. David Jason, the star of Only Fools and Horses, is to play Mr Micawber in a four-part comedy-drama series scripted by John Sullivan, who wrote Only Fools and Horses.

Dickens writer in row with BBC sells script to ITV

As the crisis in television comedy deepens, one leading screenwriter has turned to Dickens for inspiration - and delivered an embarrassing snub to the BBC in the process. The creator of Only Fools and Horses, one of the most successful comedies in British television history, is to recreate the David Copperfield character, Mr Micawber, for ITV.

ITV recruits Jason for Dickens drama

ITV has signed up David Jason to star in Micawber, Yorkshire Television's forthcoming drama based on the character from Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. David Jason, star of The Darling Buds of May and A Touch of Frost, will play the title role in the 4 x 60-minute drama. It is understood to have a budget of £800,000 to£1 million per episode.

I shall miss Heartburn Hotel (BBC1) very much. [...] I tell you, slip it on at the National Theatre and it would pass as Samuel Beckett.

First Basil Fawlty. Then that frightening woman at the Adelphi, who charged you for sleeping on the floor. Now the darkly funny Heartburn Hotel (BBC1) or, more properly, The Olympic, named in the belief that Birmingham would host the Olympics. An appropriate home for no-hopers. [...] It's like looking down a plug hole and seeing small, bright eyes looking back.

Over Here (BBC1) is about the British and American fliers on the same air-base. And, before you say you've heard that one, you haven't heard John Sullivan, who wrote Only Fools And Horses, tell it. It's funny with black flashes.

Sitting Pretty (BBC1), by John Sullivan, is a warm doughnut for Diane Bull, who is the hot, strawberry jam in the middle. Should I know Diane Bull? She has evidently been on the stage more than TV. A striking comic actress with a putter-putter, two-stroke delivery as if she talked ("Phe-nom-en-al") when you pulled a string at the back. Beautiful dolls are faintly unfashionable and, therefore, to be cherished as rarities.

In Only Fools And Horses (BBC1) Del, the course of whose love-life is littered with sleeping policemen or just policemen, was arrested while about to plight his troth to a strippergram.

I quite enjoyed Citizen Smith but I should mention that he too is an import. Woolfie is the Fonzie of Tooting.