Keith Waterhouse

This attempt to translate him into television was far too long and not half funny enough. It may be like trying to televise Punch and Judy. There is something poltergeist in Punch which fights against it.

Charters and Caldicott did one thing which took my breath away. When they found a body in the bedroom they did not, as is the norm, take it surreptitiously round to the squire's library or embalm it as a paperweight, they called the police. A stroke of amazing originality this. I hold out, however, no great hopes for the success of the serial. They might have been better advised to call the undertaker.

Now as Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall and Walter Mitty and I know very well, this sort of thing is a quick visit to the asylum of the mind. And you can take the word any way you want. It has nothing whatsoever to do with French farcical episodes like last night's Billy Liar, with his four fiancees and two engagement parties and bobing in and out of assorted doors.

People and programmes don't change much. Budgie was recognisably the same as the first, though probably improved by time. Though it dealth with a pretty smelly level of humanity, the comedy disinfected the dishonesty and it had the oddest air of innocence. The last episode, like the first, accelerated at the end into something very funny indeed.

And that's another test of a catchy programme. You begin to talk like the script. I'm having some difficulty not breaking into small-time crime slang. The script is, of course, by the excellent old firm of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.

Queenie's Castle has a certain native vigour which is dissipated by the fact that the queen herself lacks natural authority. Diana Dors's basic gentility and backhanders with a handbag are no substitute for the required basilisk eye and blistering tongue.

One must grant "Queenie's Castle" (Yorkshire) a kind of courage. The Shepherd family in general, and Queenie in particular have positively no redeeming features. A drunken, thieving, common burden of the Welfare State, giving the place a bad name, lowering the tone of the neighbourhood, their only glory is their buoyancy.