Victoria Wood (I)

As proven by this amiable documentary, hallowed practitioners of the musical spoof include acts as diverse as Bill Bailey, The Two Ronnies, Tom Lehrer, Monty Python and Victoria Wood, who's breathlessly funny Let's Do It is one of the greatest comedy songs ever written, and I'll mud-wrestle anyone who says otherwise.

All of which poses the question: why can't all channels be as good as this?

Tribute is paid to a very different form of entertainment in Comedy Songs: The Pop Years. But what exactly, one of the first questions asks, is a comedy song?

"A song that makes you laugh," suggests Victoria Wood. She should know, having sung dozens in her breakthrough TV gig on consumer show, That's Life.

She's an original whose song, Let's Do It Again, is described as a mix of George Gershwin and Alan Bennett, as she celebrates "the absurdity of the mundane".

Who cannot warm to a song whose lyrics include the lines "Bend me over backwards on me Hostess trolley" and "Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly"? Eat your heart out, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The history of comedy songs reflects the changing voice of comedy in general, from music hall songs, to Peter Kay's recent number one, as Geraldine with The Winner's Song.

Writer David Quantick traces the origins of the comedy song back to "some pillock in a jester's hat with a lute, singing about his genitals to the king, making it up as he went along".

One thing about comedy songs is that they may be irritating, but you can't stop singing them. The skiffle era gave birth to such memorable ditties as Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight? What sort of mind comes up with a lyric like that?

The birth of the singles chart in the early 1950s meant that comedy songs could make money. The Barron Knights and The Goons had hits. There were topical songs at the start of TV's That Was The Week That Was, and Benny Hill sang about Ernie, who drove the fastest milkcart in the west.

Many songs came from TV shows like The Two Ronnies, The Goodies (doing the funky gibbon) and It Ain't Half Hot Mum duo Don Estelle and Windsor Davies duetting on Whispering Grass.

Comedy songs gave hits to people who wouldn't normally expect to make the charts. Barry Cryer recalls having a number one in Finland 50 years ago with a cover version of Purple People Eater - which, on reflection, sounds like something you might find in Crooked House.

Eschewing the notion of catering for a particular demographic group or wanting to belong to a specific comedic genre, dinnerladies clings steadfast to the old-fashioned ideal of simply being a warm, humorous show that people, regardless of age, creed or social status, can watch and enjoy.

dinnerladies (BBC1) has already been recommissioned. That quirky lower case d is keeping me awake nights. I am told there is no reason for it. Victoria just likes it that way. It is a sign of her resounding clout that no one queried it. Just as, when the last script turned on someone becoming a lighthouse keeper, no one mentioned that there are no lighthouse keepers any more.

When I had flu in California I was given a vitamin B injection - at least I hope it was - in my bottom. Well, you don't like to argue. Julie Walters has the same effect on dinnerladies (BBC1). Instant invigoration and aching embarrassment.

But for what a written script can give rise to you have to watch Julie Walters doing her 'Dotty's Slot' number in Wood and Walters (Granada). Oscar Wilde would have swooned with envy. Every line is an epigram that comes shining through Dotty's cloud of talcum like a shaft of moonlight.

Victoria was a guest critic on the latest instalment of the continuously interesting, and indeed by now compulsory, Did You See? (BBC2), hosted this time by Mavis Nicholson because Ludovic Kennedy was off with flu. Ludo fronts the show to perfection, but Mavis took over without a hitch, thereby indicating the robustness of the format. One of the programmes up for discussion was O.T.T. (Central), which Victoria was generous enough to rate as highly original, even though it counts as a competitor. When it was put to Victoria that O.T.T. lacked edge, she asked why edge should be thought of as something a comedy show needed to have. At least one viewer gave a small yell of agreement at this point.

Already a booming success, Wood and Walters (Granada) should be there for ever. The basic strength of the show is the avalanche of high-quality material provided by Victoria Wood, but on top of that there is the bonus that she is an engaging performer in her own right, and on top of that there is the further bonus conferred by the participation of Julie Walters, who can give even a dud line an interesting reading and who lavishes on a good line the sort of inventive attention that makes writers think there must be other compensations in the television business besides money.