Johnny Speight

But what is happening, surely, is that Garnett is gobbling up his own creator, bones, brains, marrow and all. Only Speight's tape-recorder ears are still unchewed. Till Death Us Do Part, partly composed in defiant bravado of the monstrous hordes of prudes and censors, has lurched in ugly staggers from what it began by satirizing into the very thing, the exact process satirized.

The new Johnny Speight series (BBC1) was gorgeously acted by Cyril Cusack and James Booth and equally well directed and lit. Speight's tramps have always had a taste for the dolce vita ever since a real one hitched a lift in his Rolls "because you meet a nicer class of person that way." A very deluxe production and mildly memorable remarks and turns of phrase.

Speight's speciality is creating the ranting monster, writing the overwhelming monologue. Nobody towers in "Curry and Chips," though Eric Sykes stands a head above the rest.

The Arthur Haynes Show, on ITV, for instance, has an anarchical, bitter note of protest rippling through even its wilder moments. Perhaps it is no accident that scriptwriter Johnny Speight's two straight plays have dealt with mental illness. Echoes of them thud through his workaday comedies like footsteps in the dark.