Sheila Hancock

Sheila Hancock & Katy Brand on Strictly Xmas special

Actress Sheila Hancock, comedian and Telegraph writer Katy Brand and footballer Fabrice Muamba are among the names confirmed for this year's Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special.

Robert Webb, actor and comedian, opens the diary he kept when he was 17 for the benefit of host (and comedian) Rufus Hound and an enthralled audience. His entries include one about going to a party and kissing a girl he didn't really fancy. I always listen to this programme, now in its fourth series. But I often wonder whether a real conversation with the diaries' authors (who have included Meera Syal, Sheila Hancock, Michael Winner and Julian Clary) would produce something more satisfying than some wisecracks from Hound and lots of easy audience laughs.

Video - Five minutes with: Sheila Hancock

Actress Sheila Hancock talks to Matthew Stadlen about first-night nerves, home life with late husband John Thaw, leaving school at 15 - and how actors protect one another.

Sandi Toksvig becomes Portsmouth University chancellor

Comedian, author and presenter succeeds Sheila Hancock and is welcomed by Professor John Craven (not that one).

An affectionate tribute to the actor as we approach the 10th anniversary of his death. It charts his rise to fame in gritty Seventies police drama The Sweeney, culminating in his most memorable role as opera-loving Oxford sleuth Inspector Morse, whom he played for 13 years. There are contributions from Thaw's widow Sheila Hancock and three daughters, plus home movie footage.

We're back in Katherine Jakeways's fictional small market town, Waddenbrook. Sheila Hancock acts as all-seeing narrator of the everyday lives of its inhabitants. Jan is returning from a big trip abroad, and agonising. Esther and Jonathan are still trying for a baby. Jan is longing for Jonathan. At the supermarket there's a special on choc ices and the manager is still sharing his longing for his ex-wife over the Tannoy. Marvellous cast (Mackenzie Crook and Penelope Wilton among them) juggle exactly with such elements of homely surreality.

My Teenage Diary - review

My Teenage Diary (Radio 4) returned yesterday with Sheila Hancock reading from her 14-year-old self's account of a trip to France.

Sheila Hancock reads out her diary to host comedian Rufus Hound and a vocal Radio Theatre audience. She's been keeping diaries since she was very young but, because a water main burst in her street, most of them were lost in the resulting flood. She shares the one that's still left, from 1947 when she was a scholarship girl at a grammar school which, she said, changed her life. One way was by a trip to France organised for her by her teachers. She was 14, on her own in a foreign country for the first time. Abroad was a different place then, as we hear.

Lifetime award for Carry On actor Sheila Hancock

Women in Film and Television honours 77-year-old for her 'outstanding and lasting' contribution to her trade.

It would have been worth listening to the Radio 4 sitcom North by Northamptonshire just for Sheila Hancock and Penelope Wilton, but it turned out to be good in all sorts of other ways too. Setting it in the fictitious market town of Wadenbrook, writer Katherine Jakeways picked off local "characters" with the eagle eye of a rooftop sniper. For example, Rod relieves the tedium of managing the local Co-op by sending suggestive messages over the tannoy, while Frank and Angela celebrate their love by performing the worst ever version of Je t'aime.

Clearly a major comedy writing talent, Jakeways is as adept at coming up with stinging one-liners as she is able to create a choice gallery of English eccentrics. Casting Sheila Hancock as the narrator was inspired: her sardonic and sometimes downright snide interventions making a perfect counterpoint to the barminess of Wadenbrook's social round. I can imagine this one transferring well to TV.