Victoria Wood (II)

All I want for Christmas is Victoria Wood

The thought of Victoria Wood's return to the BBC Christmas schedules is enough to get me excited at the height of summer.

Any radio show that's just started its 51st series has to be considered a national treasure. Described as an antidote to panel games, Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue may be mainly cosy, middle class comedy fare, but it's impossible not to warm to the panel's total enthusiasm - including Barry Cryer and Victoria Wood - and eagerness with which the live audience boos and claps at every opportunity. Now using rotating chairmen, after the death of Humphrey Lyttelton last year, Stephen Fry sets the bar high here for those following, clearly relishing the banter he has with his quick-witted colleagues. Criticising such an institution may be tantamount to heresy, but adding 15 minutes to the 30 wouldn't do any harm.

Is bringing back I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue post-Humph a good idea? ISIHAC is my answer: the show has never held the place in my heart that it has in others'. Still, its return on Monday seemed fine enough, not particularly because of Stephen Fry, the host (Jack Dee and Rob Brydon are to step in later), but because of Victoria Wood. She is so clever with words - "Dictaphone: person on a mobile," she quipped - and so generous as a performer, arguing when she needed to, hanging back likewise. I hope she returns.

Stephen Fry, the first of Clue's replacement chairmen is, without doubt and in other places, a very funny, clever, witty, charming, versatile man. The problem here is that he shows it by performing every line. Where Lyttelton made them seem as if they had just entered his head, Fry sounds as if each one has been the subject of lengthy study.

The script's rudery, therefore, no longer comes as a surprise. It's overt, intended, inescapable. Victoria Wood, last night's guest panellist, has said she found doing the show "oddly relaxing". Maybe that's why she hardly shone. Or maybe the show is just in transition.

After two weeks of trailers few can be unaware of the return of the "antidote to panel games" with Stephen Fry in the chair. Recorded at Her Majesty's Theatre weeks ago, the audience roars approval for Fry's saucy delivery of Iain Pattinson's salty script. Sven replaces Samantha as the invisible scorer, offering more chances to spot the innuendo. Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer, Tim Brooke-Taylor and guest panellist Victoria Wood make merry with the customary multitude of entendres, double and single Colin Sell, as ever, is at the piano.

After the sad passing of our beloved Humph, ISIHAC could have quietly shuffled off into the sunset, but it returns with guest host (and former panel member) Stephen Fry. Regulars Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined by new girl Victoria Wood, who turned down the chance to appear on the show 19 years ago, but hopefully will make many more appearances in future.

TV panel shows are too 'male dominated'

Panel shows such as I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue and Have I Got News For You are too 'male dominated' according to the comedienne Victoria Wood.

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.