Radio 2's History Of British Comedy

Chuckle muscles at the ready, I prepared to be simultaneously tickled and enlightened by David Mitchell's History of British Comedy.

Sadly, however, it turned out to be an all-too-familiar trawl through the early days of music hall, variety and radio, with precious little of the Mitchell magic we know and love from his prolific radio and TV output.

A catch-all documentary series such as this is only really as good as its clips and contributors, so it was disappointing to find Mitchell, or his producer, rounding up the usual suspects - Michael Grade, Barry Cryer, Ken Dodd and token academic CP Lee, all of whose reflections on comedy have been documented to death over the years.

The country must be crawling with people with a different take on early British comedy and its connection to the comedy of today, as well as people in their 70s, 80s and 90s who saw the likes of Max Miller, Sid Field, Robb Wilton and Jimmy James in their heydays. Where were they?

By far the most vivid and original recollections of early comedy came from 91-year-old Denis Norden, a living encyclopedia of British comedy and variety who merits a documentary series to himself.

Well, not entirely a complete history, but one that stretches from the Second World War to the early Sixties, as told by comedian David Mitchell and as captured, of course, by BBC radio. In wartime the variety theatres were, for a short time, closed and radio, from then on, became the nation's prime entertainment. Mitchell considers the birth of the catchphrase (some from Tommy Handley's ITMA are still uttered today) and how the Windmill Theatre, postwar, educated a new generation of comedians, including those who, in The Goon Show, changed radio comedy forever.