Leslie Phillips

"I never touched your mother until after we were married," announces Alf Garnett. "Well after," adds his wife.

Sex and the Sitcom was all very enjoyable but over far too quickly. Provide your own punchline.

Narrated by Madeline Smith, the cause of erotic frenzy in many a seventies sitcom male - and my adolescent self - the documentary chronicled sexual mores and manners in the UK as reflected in its situation comedies.

Frustration featured quite prominently, as did inadequacy, embarrassment and anxiety, mostly located in male characters like Rigsby, Reginald Perrin and Hancock. Even the arrival of the permissive society failed to loosen the British sitcom's stays, although the programme did find a bizarre and disturbing clip featuring Terry Scott and June Whitfield planning an orgy.

For years the only man seen revelling in the physical delights of the opposite sex was Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii, testament to what a fine actor he was.

When sex itself eventually made an appearance it was women characters who were invariably in the vanguard - the insatiable Dorian from Birds Of A Feather, Mildred trying to seduce George, Miss Jones' pursuit of Phillip in Rising Damp.

Leslie Phillips did play a sexually predatory man in Casanova '73, but public outrage caused it to lose its prime time spot after three episodes. The sitcom male has remained resolutely inadequate ever since.

The sitcom and the sexual revolution is the subject of a documentary that wonders at everything from sexual frustration to the British love of innuendo and the changing role of women. Leslie Phillips, Leslie Joseph and Wendy Craig together with sitcom writers David Nobbs and Simon Nye are among those discussing such old favourites as Up Pompeii!, Hancock's Half Hour and Him & Her. In browsing the decades, the film asks why Butterflies caused a stir in the Eighties and if Men Behaving Badly really did capture the sexual politics of the Nineties. Also, how do American sitcoms differ in their approach? And does the modern British sitcom recognise any taboos at all?

Leslie Phillips gets cake in the face for Comic Relief

Screen smoothie Leslie Phillips gets his face dunked in cream - as he is hit by a cake from fellow Carry On legend Barbara Windsor.

Return to a more innocent (but politically incorrect) time as actor Leslie Phillips hosts this glorious two-part appreciation of the Carry On films. Beginning in 1958 with Carry On Sergeant, the series burst on to the scene just as kitchen-sink dramas and their angry young men were tearing in to the Establishment, and Hammer horror films were putting the wind up cinema audiences everywhere. Cheap, cheerful and bawdy though they were, it's fair to say the Carry On's also reflected the changing social fabric of the nation, whether it was sending up sacred cows like the NHS or the Empire, or spoofing the western, the Hammer horror and the spy movie. If you are already a fan, this will be bliss: if not, then just listen and learn.

Radio 2 is celebrating British comedy so here's Leslie Phillips, the king of onscreen leer and chuckle, with a salute to the Carry On films which, for half a century, packed cinemas and, to this day, score highly with TV audiences. Was it because they related so closely to the events of their times (National Service, the NHS, holidays at home, holidays in Spain) or that their characters were archetypes as old as Chaucer's? Fellow Carry On actors reminisce with Phillips, clips from the archive recall those who have gone to the great sequel in the sky.

The ding-dongs behind the scenes of Carry On

Leslie Phillips talks about his new Radio 2 programme on the classic comedy films.

To the modern ear, a collection of stereotypes and elderly jokes. Yet it does everything with such charm, and in its day, which stretched from 1959 to 1977, the characters and situations would be more familiar. Worth listening to again on BBC7 just to hear Leslie Phillips navigating: "Left hand down a bit", etc. Once our longest-running radio comedy.