Time Shift: Malcom Muggeridge

About 20 years ago I received a novelty card game for Christmas. On the cards were printed a picture of a television character and a series of questions. Answer one correctly and move on to the next laying the last down to make a square and winning the game. There is a point to this. Read more

Coronation Street

And relax. Read more

Coronation Street

Death walks tall amongst the big soaps this weather. In one of them a major character gets busy dying, on the other a major character gets busy killing. What one to watch? How long do I get to answer that? Read more

The Office

It would be particularly interesting at this point in time, I think, to be able to flick through some back copies of Radio Times from 1979 and have a gander at what sort of comment the second series of Fawlty Towers was creating around itself. Read more

Coronation Street

Coronation Street, I have always maintained, is the best television soap and has been since its beginnings in 1960. No other soap has its depth, lent in part by its extraordinarily long tenure but also fleshed out by superb characters and great writing which has often lurched beyond the excellent into the brilliant. Read more

Heroes of Comedy: Dick Emery

When the Heroes of Comedy series first began on Channel 4 it was something of a revelation. Here was a tribute programme that used “talking heads” to the best effect yet seen and dispensed with ponderous and hagiographic narrative. People who actually knew and worked with the subject talked and revealed a little of the subject that might otherwise have gone unknown to mortals such as I. Read more

Another Audience With Ken Dodd

Quite a few years ago now I saw Ken Dodd’s Laughter Show at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow and enjoyed it immensely. Then in 1995 I saw An Audience With Ken Doddon ITV and enjoyed that hugely too. So as I settled down to watch Another Audience With Ken Dodd last Saturday night I had high hopes. Happiness was on its way and a pleasant diversion from the incessant fixed grins of Gareth and Will and their pop pap. Unfortunately ’twas not to be. Read more

Big Brother

In its final stages now Big Brother is reaching the point where, for me, it became most interesting last time round. Less people means more time for the remaining participants. More evictions mean a higher awareness amongst the housemates of both the impending end of the show and of their own mortality within it. Read more