Nancy Banks-Smith

Well, people enter Are You Being Served? by walking downstairs, one by one in more or less fancy dress. Original it ain't. Indeed, it is strangely familiar. It reminds me of that stuff of which not a drop is sold until it's 10 years old. The effect is much the same: you tend to fall on the floor and feel utterly ashamed of yourself afterwards.

The last of Man About The House (Thames) was not the best. It couldn't be when everyone has to make a positively final appearance and there is hardly room to make a cat laugh.

Open All Hours (BBC2) by Roy Clarke, the everyday story of a grocer's shop, is a comedy series of considerable charm.

I don't know how Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke manage the smooth and delicious mix of Man About the House]. But I can see all too well what Tom Brennand and Roy Bottomley are doing in the sad farce Up The Workers. Usually half a minute before they do it.

"Make it Thursday" said Terry Scott in Happy Ever After (BBC1) "It's a rotten night on telly." Considering this show is on a Thursday, that is criticism of a high order and object lesson to us all. It was, in fact, a disappointing night. The goodies on the wrapper of Radio Times bear little relation to the contents of the tin.

Nuts in May (BBC1) was great fun, being the mis-adventures of a couple of liberal, law-abiding lambs, camping in deepest Dorset. (I wish I wasn't so perfectly sure which paper Keith and Candice Marie Pratt took when they were at home.)

But Lloyd George Knew My Father is a comparatively new play, only about three years old. I must say it doesn't look it.

Beneath the News (BBC1) was good fun along the lines of Week Ending on Radio 4. Only with Moving Pictures. And in Colour. And from Manchester. I particularly liked the adventures of BTN's intrepid, albeit inept, reporters. Mugged, while reporting "The trial of a self-confessed gangland leader." "Why do you think you are being attacked in this vicious way? "It is possibly a little early to say.... It may be this gentleman has some interest in the outcome of the trial."

They arrive late: "Five minutes ago this street was the scene of amazing carnage." They are trapped in the Royal Box as the royals arrive.

As I have watched such staunch chaps standing in the middle of the street in their sheepskin jackets, I have often felt that they were in real danger from a bus. Or a sheep. The script was apparently the unaided work of John Hudson, though, judging by the abundance of religious sketches, he may have had divine assistance.

Johnny Speight is bootleg liquor. He scalds through your intestines and explodes your toes. What was unmistakeable about For Richer... For Poorer (BBC1) was the proof of it.

Still, it is a cheap and melancholy show and it points out tricks of the trade like TV announcers always dropping their eyes after their announcement, presumably to a monitor. Perhaps to the floor manager on the floor again. And I did and still do like Neil Innes' songs very much.