Sally Phillips

Ah, Des O'Connor. Indefatigable crooner, Morecambe and Wise foil, chat-show host and borderline national treasure. Who knew he's daft enough to eat cat food by accident? Or is he? Maybe his long, peculiar story about how he dined on this strange dish in a holiday villa is all nonsense.

O'Connor, looking as bronzed as a 70s sideboard, is a game contestant on Lee Mack's team, and quickly gets into the spirit of the show after a giggly start. Meanwhile, on David Mitchell's team, Rhod Gilbert regales us with an account of the acute trauma he suffered at an airport.

And comic actress Sally Phillips (Smack the Pony, Miranda) apparently plays a texting-game with her husband while he's at the swimming baths. Worse, she once rode her uncle's mobility scooter with disastrous consequences. Perhaps. It's a great show, and what Friday nights are for.

Interview: Sally Phillips - writer of The Decoy Bride

The former Smack the Pony writer/performer Sally Phillips discusses fish pie, Narnia and Rear of the Year.

Sally Phillips looks back at her career

Sally Phillips has enjoyed an acting career that has spanned over fifteen years and take in both TV and movie work.

Miranda is very much an acquired taste. Some people think it's a skilful frolic through the campest excesses of physical comedy; others think it's a mindless collection of all things base and juvenile. The rest of us know that it's both.

The last in the current series was, naturally, a festive episode, which gave Hart the perfect excuse to indulge the gluttony and childishness that makes her so endearing.

An episode of Miranda can often be a mixed bag, but at this time of year, with everyone in a forgiving mood because they're so happy (and drunk), Hart got away with a lot of the more irritating qualities of her work, with help from the fantastic Patricia Hodge and Sally Phillips.

Tonight was also the first we saw of Miranda's father, played by Tom Conti, who filled most of the episode's falling-over quota, so that Miranda finally remained pretty vertical throughout the episode.

As she waited in for a package and then missed the delivery because of her intense dislike of carol singers, Hart proved that for all her larking about, she is a great observer of everyday dilemmas. Anyone who has ever come home to find the dreaded, 'Sorry we missed you' card in their hallway would have related to her frustration.

Best of all, she didn't fold and give us what we were hoping for in the form of a long-awaited kiss with Gary, leaving the door wide open for a will-they-won't-they third series of this excellent show.

How to describe Miranda Hart's style of comedy? Certainly, she throws everything into it - panto, slapstick, a little social satire, bad singing, malapropisms, farting. Whatever works. Of course, the biggest thing she throws into it is herself. And if she lands on her backside, well, hey - job done! The second series of Miranda started as her fans hope it means to go on, with a taxi whipping off her party dress and roaring away with it caught in the door. Magnificent.

If this had been the Carry On team, they'd have chosen saucy little Babs Windsor to be stranded in the street in her smalls. I'm not suggesting that Miranda is more of a Hattie Jacques, but oh lordy how much funnier - and she knows it - to have a woman of size lumbering up the street in bra, big pants and unattractive tights, valiantly putting art ahead of dignity.

Do women mind that men would find that such a hoot? It seems safe to assume that Miranda's constituency is vastly female, though her overarching rom-com plot - the perennial pursuit of Gary from the local gastropub - is merely a slave to Miranda's primary purpose of making a show of herself. But what a show! Listen to that live studio audience - a pit of hyenas feeding on their own laughter. More! More!

Sometimes, it was the mock-heroic way she told 'em ("I am with much news that I shall now birth!"); sometimes, a cheeky aside to the camera did the trick, or even a simple ungainly twirl. No one cares where the laughs come from, but come they must and do. Miranda's higgledy-piggledy castle of fun is built on instinct rather than theory.

The show cloaks itself in wholesome, old-fashioned japery with its broad misunderstandings ("I said ghosts, not goats!") and knowing winks at Hi-de-Hi! and Frank Spencer, and the way Miranda's mother (Patricia Hodge) flits in and out as if through a time portal to a 1950s Whitehall farce.

But there's always a sharp sensibility at work - in Hart's gleeful observations of Miranda's post-Bridget Jones victimhood, of the girly fads and shibboleths ("Fabulasmic!") of her fatuous posh friends - and if anyone is more hilariously note-perfect at being one than Sally Phillips (who is literally a scream as the hyper-amused Tilly), I'd hate to meet them. So, yes, more.

Series two of Miranda Hart's gently farcical, slapstick-happy comedy continues where the first left off, with Miranda battling the threat of eternal spinsterhood while trying to get one over on her Sloaney rival Tilly. Sally Phillips (previously best known for Smack the Pony) co-stars.

Remember the dodgy MP who claimed thousands for a gold sarcophagus and a terracotta army? Or the Duckmanitarian crisis, which saw ducks around the country losing their homes?

Miranda Hart sums up 2009 with spoofs made up in someone's head. The show uses real footage, heavily messed with, and specially-recorded material that looks at events that almost happened but didn't - such as an 80-year-old Arlene Phillips being replaced on Strictly by a child.

Talking heads include Stephen K Amos, Sally Phillips and Duncan Bannatyne.

One of the best things about Miranda Hart's sitcom is her old schoolfriend Tilly, played by the inestimable Sally Phillips. This week, she tries to fix up her old mate mate "Kongers" with a blind date, "Dreamboat Charlie" (Adrain Scarborough). When that doesn't work, she has to suffer the indignity of her mother setting her up.

For several years Miranda Hart has been cheerfully stealing scenes from under the noses of her more illustrious co-stars, so it was only a matter of time before TV producers rewarded her with a comedy series of her own.

Episode one of Miranda would appear to justify their faith. It has a genuine sense of fun, a distinct style, several very sharp lines and some cleverly constructed set-pieces. But, God, it was manic. In the words of Michael Winner in that memorably atrocious insurance advert: "Calm down, dear."

Hart, who also wrote the script, works very hard for her laughs, but an occasional change of pace would have been very welcome. It might also have afforded a little breathing space for some character development, which was in seriously short supply. A disproportionate amount of the jokes were predicated on Hart's size, which, personally, I don't find particularly disproportionate.

When not addressing the camera, Hart is busy bantering with joke shop co-owner Stevie (Sarah Hadland), being socially inept and lusting after hunky chef Gary (Tom Ellis) who, in an interesting reversal of traditional sitcom gender objectifying, is underwritten to the point of non-existence. Hart is much more generous towards her female co-stars, providing Patricia Hodge and Sally Phillips with the opportunity to do some scene-stealing of their own as neurotic mother and bitchy best friend respectively.