Nancy Banks-Smith

Spectres of far more horrific half hours haunt the fringes of my memory. It had a nicely matched pair in Arthur Lowe as a portly butler, and Ken Jones as a beery peer. And when John Stevenson has exhausted all the comic possibilities in the name Basket which he must have done in the first instalment, it will leave room for better and less predictable jokes.

I had not laughed madly like that since someone, who knows where or when, sang "There's a ferret sitting up my nose" on TV. I strongly suspect it must have ten one of the Python lot in some other show. The humour smells the same. Insane, surreal, subversive.

There was a patina of polished antiquity about all the sketches in Frankie Howerd, The Laughing Stock (Thames) as if they had been buffed for generations by a butcher's thumb.

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.

It had a certain momentum, particularly towards the end, and Donald Houston, playing with vigour, converted a couple of tries. But it was basically a series of practical jokes - even funnier to those playing them than those on the receiving end.

The very title "Where Shall I Sit?" indicates what the show was attempting and why it was dropped. There is a certain uncertainty about it. A suggestion of L plates.

Peter Cook seems hellbent on antagonising his audience and succeeds. "Long may I remain an amateur" was his final, defiant cry, but Where Shall I Sit? suggests he doesn't give a damn about his audience. And I don't suppose he does.

All comedians are thieves (so are writers - I should know). As a comedian who writes his own script, Benny Hill is bound to be a compulsive gag-snatcher. One could date the vintage of many of his jokes in The Benny Hill Show (Thames) like a conoisseur appreciating good old port.

I felt a little comic counterweight might raise my spirits. On Mondays that's "Oh Brother!" (BBC1) and "Dear Mother" (Yorkshire). My considered opinion is that if they were both fired into outer space they might feel at home there among the collection of worn-out hardware and imperishable rubbish already circling the earth.

Having sat and stared at this stainless sheet of paper for some time, idly counting my teeth with the tip of my tongue (6, 26...) I am driven to the conclusion that I do not care one way or the other about "Bless This House" (Thames).