Nancy Banks-Smith

"Spring and Autumn" is a surprisingly good egg. Not hard boiled, of course, but not, as one had feared, all runny. To get an egg just nicely right is difficult enough, so let's hear it for the cooks: director Ronnie Baxter, Jimmy Jewel as the old man and an engaging boy, all teeth and backchat, called Charlie Hawkins, a sort of Jack Wild Mark II.

Romany Jones seems to me the most offensively bad programme that has been perpetrated on an old lady with a poor leg who couldn't get up to switch off.

Like the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, the striking thing about "Nobody is Norman Wisdom" (ATV) was the silence. There was no studio audience. The effect of all that ambient shoosh was remarkably like a week in the country: very peaceful, pleasant and - slow. It was as though someone had taken his theme song "Don't Laugh at Me" literally.

I wonder sometimes about TV audiences. There is a door at the BBC marked Witch Room Now, some would say that the initial "S" has fallen off. But I can say, a likely story. I think they keep three weird sisters in there and let them loose on comics like poor Gordon Peters (BBC1).

In spite of the enthusiasm of the Colchester Evening Gazette ("Our Brian burst on the screen last night") I was a bit bemused by Brian Marshall's show "Hey Brian!" (Yorkshire). It seemed so evidently a show for children. Children's television is the valuable equivalent of old time variety. The audience is critical but it doesn't matter too much if the show lacks polish.

Of course I know Gordon Peters when I see him. He's thigummy, good old um... The sort of face you see in the street and say "Surely that's thingummy, good old um." He is, in fact, infinitely better than his show which is one of those situation comedies where characters tend to laugh rather a lot, nervously but noisily. Someone has to.

I'd like to say, and who shall stop me, how pleasureable the series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (BBC1) has been. How funny and true. In spite of Keats, funny is the truth and truth is funny and that is all script writers need to know. Or nearly.

"Shut That Door" (ATV) pushes show business to the point of surrealism. Parted from a guest whom he won't see for at least 60 seconds, Larry Grayson shakes hands with the left hand, pats a cheek with the right hand and kisses the other cheek. And that's only the men.

I used to like Never Mind the Quality very much. Was I so much easier to please or is this show much inferior? It seemed to rely on cries of "Knickers" and "Stuff that in your carburettor." and jokes that telegraphed their arrival early enough to allow you to duck.

The show was like a victory V. sign, meant to be both cheerful and obscene at one and the same time. But there was one monent when Frankie Howerd proved he is the best, the only stand-up solo comic we have. Like Marie Lloyd he took a tear jerker for a tenor and made it unbelievably funny and filthy. It was a total demolition job on the song, and "I did it my way" will never be the same again.