Nancy Banks-Smith

Spike Milligan's Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town (that fills up a line or two) for Ronnie Barker (LWT) was unmistakable, maniacal Milligan. One line was "We must act fast," "I'm acting as fast as I can," which brings me to my moral. I think actors, even when speeded up with silent film technique, are too pedestrian for the pace of Goon comedy. Sight is too slow.

"Under and Over," starring the Bachelors in their first acting role, a phrase to gel the blood, was a pleasant surprise. Quite as funny as one has any right to expect on a Friday. Comedy requires tension and the north-south Irish tension twanged into laughter here like stretched elastic vibrating.

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.

Granada's excellent series "The Lovers" is remarkable for its ping-ponging, tangential dialogue, which ricochets and hits your funny bone.

An account of Spike Milligan's nervous breakdown "The Other Spike" took the form of a dream or nightmare or a poem written under drugs. Extraordinarily vivid images and incidents but unconnected. A Siamese cat, sapphire-eyed and sinuous. A moron incessantly whistling an idiot tune.

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.

All is grist to Mr Hill's mill. He prefers show business with its bloomers showing.

The fun is in the flip, surrealist, fragmented dialogue and I don't think I'll give you a "for-instance" because its ping-pong comedy is only apparent when spoken.

In the event, it was quite endearing. The very dependable script writing team of Vince Powell and Harry Driver, whose strong suit is pathos, enlisted my sympathy for this improbable enterprise very adroitly.

It was a wet sort of night for comedy. "Bachelor Father" (BBC1) seems increasingly inclined to the watery, misty-eyed smile. It is not so much soft at the centre as liquid. Indeed given to dribbling. In the course of half an hour almsot everyone smiled with loving and forgiving understanding at everyone else.