I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

Some top Samantha innuendo

Samantha tells me that she has to nip off to a special Welsh Conservative Association dinner for their most senior MP, whose name is said to be almost impossible to pronounce. She's certainly found the longest standing Welsh member a bit of a mouthful.

Radio 4 in new row over bad language

Last week's episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue contained the word "a---".

In defence of smutty jokes

Innuendo has a long, illustrious history in British comedy - as Jack Dee's critics should know.

Radio comedy's constant innuendo makes me wince

I've been listening to Clue since it started, back in the Seventies. I have often wept with laughter at it but I think it reached a natural end when Humphrey Lyttelton died in 2008. Radio 4's then controller, Mark Damazer, thought otherwise and with reason. He noted how newer listeners to Radio 4 love it. New listeners, younger listeners are what every network controller wants. So it's probably irrelevant that, to me, Clue now sounds grubby, knowing, well-thumbed, heavy-handed. I hated Susan Calman on Monday singing Horny to the tune of Leaning on a Lampost. I winced at the lists of rude sweets. The studio audience loved it all. The very word "cock", even in blameless context, sent them into gales of laughter. Baffling.

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue what's wrong with Samantha

Last week it was announced that four sad people with no sense of humour, no discernable social skills, no life, no experience and no self-awareness had complained to the BBC about the lovely Samantha. For those of you who don't listen to Radio 4, (shame on you!), Samantha is the non-existent scorer on the epic long-running comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. She appears in name only and her gentle but often slightly risqué exploits are relayed each week for the listener.

Jack Dee threatens to quit ISIHAC over smutty jokes

Jack Dee has allegedly threatened to quit as chairman of the long-running comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue after he was ordered to tone down his smutty jokes.

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue: smuttiest jokes

As BBC Radio 4 agrees not to tone down I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, here are some of the show's smutty Samantha jokes over the past four decades.

5 things you might not know about the ISIHAC crew

Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Jeremy Hardy and Jack Dee are taking the beloved radio show on the road. Here's some facts about them.

There are the kind of jokes that often would make a Christmas cracker blush, but if you're in the right mood, it's hard not to find groans transformed into belly laughs by the relentless wordplay in I'm Sorry I Haven't Got A Clue. Tim Brooke-Taylor's contribution to this week's new dictionary definitions round helped wrap up the end of the 60th series (60th!) with a typically silly riff.

"Adamant: the very first male ant. Buoyant: Adam Ant's son. Descant: an ant with an office job. Distant: an ant who's been slagged off. Equidistant: an ant who's been slagged off by a horse. Hydrant: an ant with three heads. Mutant: an ant who's lost his voice. Tyrant: an ant who works for Kwik-fit. Incessant: an ant who's sleeping with his sister."

"Colindale."

"Umm, de-de-de-dum-deh ..... Ealing Broadway."

"Ohh, ohh, ohh, ooohh."

"Yesss."

"Oh, hold up, hold up."

"No, no, no, no, it's the western approach, it's wide open there now."

"Yes."

"Barons Court short."

"Nice."

"Queensway"

"Yeahh."

"Can he do that?"

He surely can. This, ladies and gents of the non-I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue-listening order, is from a transcript of a charming game on the Radio 4 show, entitled "Mornington Crescent".

Charming, that is, for anyone who grew up listening to it with mummy and daddy and fell about to its whimsy; because if you come to it late and are trying to work out the rules, you'll be stymied: there are none. The players simply name stations on the Tube until one utters the Northern Line's least exciting stop. The skill comes in making it seem as though it's a game of strategy. Ha, and indeed, ha.

Now, the best of "middle-class humour", as diverse and hard to pinpoint as that might be, is fantastic. Michael McIntyre's observations are as smooth as Stewart Lee's battering of the mass market is acerbic. But this sort of "if you're not in the club, we're not telling you how to join" nonsense in the name of comedy flies in the very face of middle-class politeness.

Not that we care - never wanted to join your stupid club anyway.

*Walks off in huff*