April 28. Ben Elton is the comedy equivalent of a punch-drunk old boxer who can’t hear the bell. Blows rain down on him; Blessed – bombed, Get A Grip – canned, Live From Planet Earth – axed. The crowd keeps booing, but Ben can’t hear that either. He hasn’t landed a decent hit since 1989; he just keeps dishing out the flops... which brings us to his new BBC1 sitcom The Wright Way.

Well I say new, the theme is the madness of Health & Safety zealots, a subject that would have been cutting edge a decade ago. David Haig plays Gerald Wright, the stress-head H&S executive for a fictional Essex town. He’s supposed to be part-Gordon Brittas, part-Reggie Perrin with an exasperated dollop of Victor Meldrew. But Wright is actually just a crushing bore, obsessed with the time women spend in bogs and dishwasher protocol.

The witless script is crammed full of old ideas, lame gags and laboured set-ups. His tap rant dates from Ben’s 1980s stand-up routine; the double entendres are a lot of older. “Talk me through my proud erection,” says Gerald talking about a speed bump. Would anyone call a speed bump an erection? And if he had said that in innocence, could anyone have kept a straight face? Even the slapstick is flawed. Wright has worked in this office for years, why is he surprised when he gets soaked by the taps?

Unlike the great sitcom characters - the Steptoes, Trotters, Fletcher and the Garnetts - there is no sense Ben’s creations exist in the real world. But in fairness, The Wright Way does make us ask questions. Like, how do the BBC execs who commission dross like this, Heading Out, The Royal Bodyguard and Big Top keep their jobs? Why does someone with Ben’s history of TV disasters keep getting the green-light? Is it just because he was the hero of the middle class right-on 1980s students who now run the BBC? Are how can they be proud of their appalling track-record? We used to make comedies that were bold, real and massively popular. Under these clowns sitcom has become safe, little watched and largely laughter-free.

*TOP 5 under-rated sitcoms of the Noughties: ’Orrible, Early Doors, Everybody Hates Chris, Arrested Development, The Tick.

OVER on Embarrassing Bodies Live, Andy from Pontypridd was showing us a Turner Prize reject. I’m sorry, it was his penis. It looked like it had been got at by a pit-bull, or Janet Street-Porter in a menopausal rage. Luckily neurologist Paul Anderson was on hand for a consultation. These docs work wonders. A bloke a few months ago had a whole new todger constructed from his forearm. They should have left the hand on; then after sex it could have given his missus a thumbs-up.

*RACHEL, 21, was cursed/blessed with enormous breasts. 34-Os! C4 would have announced her Miss Mega-Boobs UK but no-one could get close enough to crown her.

*OTHER horrors included Dr Dawn’s display of human waste. There were large stools, small stools, runny ones, scatterguns... But for all the varieties on offer, C4 still couldn’t come close to great steaming heap of crap that was BBC1’s The Wright Way.

BRITAIN needs satire like Luis Suarez needs a muzzle. Sadly 10 O’Clock Live delivers little more than a bog-standard liberal sneer peppered with bad taste jokes. Kicking off with week-old Thatcher bashing, the C4 show moved on to Jimmy Carr’s thoughts on the Boston bombing. “The FBI should have seen it coming when the brothers were seen running the early stages of the marathon dressed as the twin towers,” he quipped to an uneasy response. “Too soon?” he asked. Nope, just not funny. A promising discussion of the latest Rich List with Theo from Dragons Den and Owen Jones was sabotaged by Katie Hopkins – the worst advert for capitalism since Fred the Shred. Trouble is the show’s in-house comedian isn’t political while the would-be satirists aren’t angry, amusing or on target.

*MISSING from Britain’s Millionaire Criminals: bankers, corporate tax-dodgers, Piers Morgan...

HOT on TV: Game Of Thrones (Sky Atlantic) ... Person Of Interest (C5)... The Politician’s Husband – glorious tosh.

ROT on TV: The Wright Way – wrong, wrong, wrong... Watson & Oliver – patchier than a pirate convention... Sandi Toksvig – as funny as measles.

INSIDE a Sharia ‘court’, a battered wife was told to ask her husband why he’d hit her so she could “correct” her behaviour. It was like the old Mike Reid gag: why has your wife got two black eyes? She didn’t listen the first time... Panorama showed woman-hating UK-based clerics turning a blind eye to domestic violence and operating double standards on divorce. No stonings yet, but give ’em time.

WAS Broadchurch much cop? It dragged on and on, the detectives were useless and Joe, the much-guessed killer, gave himself up. Now ITV want a second series. At least DCI Hardy will have time for a wash.

*COMING next Broader-Church: starring Charlotte and a pie shop.

THERE’S a nasty crack in the bedroom in The Politician’s Husband, insert your own bad taste gag here. It’s symbolic of the impending crack in their marriage. And the nastier cracks running the government.

SO some Britain’s Got Talent turns are semi-pros? So what? I wouldn’t mind if they booked Joe Longthorne if it reminded idiot TV execs of the talent they’ve left stranded in the showbiz hinterland.

I HAD a dream where Corrie’s Mad Mary did a Suarez, bit a chunk out of Dev’s arm... and kept on eating. Unlikely, maybe, but more believable than a poor bookie... Or glum-faced Chesney catching Katie and Ryan talking for the umpteenth time.

*A US company is bringing out whiskey-scented aftershave. They had the idea after meeting Peter Barlow in a Weatherfield gutter last summer.

*WHAT’S happened to Billy Mitchell’s love-life? I can’t remember the last time Billy got his leg over. Julie can – that’s why she left.

RANDOM irritations: US drama castings – even the psychos are beautiful. Tabloid headlines in TV dramas like The Politician’s Husband; ‘Freya Sunshine’ would have been more The Sun’s style. Phil and Sharon on EastEnderzzz - the never-ending story of a semi-deflated Michelin Man’s magnetic hold on Miss Piggy.

SMALL Joys of TV: Lesley Sharp’s ginormous pixie ears. Daenerys and her dragons (Game Of Thrones) liberating her slave army. Ben Earl. Ian Hart (Snodgrass).

TV maths: Nick Berry + Anton du Beke = Ed Stoppard.

SEPARATED at birth: Boyd Hilton and Clive from C4’s 40 Year Old Virgins; one a socially inept bumbling embarrassment, the other some nitwit who shagged a sex-surrogate on telly.

NARRATOR Sara Mendez da Costa, during Could We Survive A Tsunami, asked us to: “Imagine a huge gash opening in the Canary Islands.” Hmm. Isn’t that where Kerry Katona went on holiday?

April 21. AT a time when Scandinavian detectives are all the rage, ITV invited us back to the killing fields of 1960s Oxford. Why go Norse, when we can have Morse? So in place of Faroese knitwear we get Formica shelves, Dansette record-players, CND and ten bob notes. And in place of John Thaw, there’s glowering Shaun Evans as the rookie detective with the mind as sharp as Sherlock’s.

This young Morse frowns a lot but that’s quite understandable. For starters some rotten swine christened him Endeavour. And all he’s got to look forward to are a beer gut, more murders than Midsomer, and decades of Hooked On Classics. Tsk. No wonder Thaw was grumpy.

Evans is inevitably over-shadowed by Roger Allam as his boss and mentor, Fred Thursday, a wily, world-widely D.I. closer in feel to the Morse we know. Thursday has the classic motor, pints of wallop and the gruff charm. Endeavour just has the brilliant mind. Who else could have worked out that hymn numbers above a murdered vicar’s pulpit led to chemical elements that spelt out the killer’s name? That would have stumped Columbo. Even Jonathan Creek would have found it contrived, although it was still more believable than Chief Super Bright, who isn’t, and who is far too short to have ever been a sixties copper.

The corpse count included a young woman and her GP. There are so many killings in the cathedral city that the coroners have Repetitive Strain Injury. Yet despite the deaths, drugs and scandal, the show feels comfortable, almost cosy. British TV is good at yesterday. It’s today we have trouble with. John Thaw shot to fame in The Sweeney, which dealt brilliantly with brutal 1970s armed robberies. If that was strong liquor, Endeavour is Horlicks. It’s old-fashioned escapism, a world of unlikely professors, surly youth and furtively gay vicars - this was a time when ‘cottaging’ was “an immoral rendezvous” rather than a way of getting promoted. It also gave us the young P.C. Strange and a young Max the pathologist for that hit of Morse nostalgia. You can’t get mugged down Memory Lane. Just murdered, most foully...

*JOHN Sweeney went undercover in North Korea. Unstable, paranoid and aggressive – that’s John. And Kim Wrong-Un isn’t much better. Sweeney endangered students to make his report, but the BBC say it was worth it because of the startling truths he uncovered. Yes, John found that North Korea is dangerous and secretive, and its people are dirt-poor and brainwashed. Well I never.

WE knew Spartacus had to lose his War Of The Damned, but didn’t he go out in style? Sparty defeated Roman imperator Crassus in single combat before getting kebabed from behind on the spears of Legionnaires not fit to lace his Thracian boots. While bold Andre Agassi lookalike Gannicus led a charge from the rear that was even more painful than the one Crassus’s rapist son Tiberius inflicted on Julius Caesar. It took a small army to bring him down. Hugely out-numbered, the former gladiators attacked so effectively that Crassus had to shoot flaming rocks into his own legions – the first known example of friendly fire. It was glorious but hopeless. One by one, our heroes were mercilessly cut down – Castor, Saxa, Naevia... Only Laeta escaped, with the gay Glads (see ya Laeta!). Gannicus was crucified – as was Crassus’s comely slave lover Kore Blimeius who’d topped Tiberius. Spartacus died happy – because he died free. His name and his spirit live on.

*THE good news for karma lovers: Crassus got his in 53BC, Caesar was assassinated nine years later.

*TOP 5 Hot Women of Spartacus: 1) Katrina Law 2) Ellen Hollman 3) Lesley Ann-Brandt 4) Brooke Harman 5) Viva Bianca.

HOT on TV: Francine Lewis (Britain’s Got Talent)... Spartacus finale – going out in a blaze of glory... Kathleen Robertson (Boss) – filthy minx... Casuals (Community).

ROT on TV: John Sweeney – bad Korea move... Da Vinci’s Demons – cast them out... Tuesday night telly – stinks like backstage at the 2013 Animal Honours.

DA Vinci’s Demons repaints the brilliant gay artist as a womanising swash-buckler. It’s like having Gilbert & George as crime-fighting rappers, Tracy Emin as a stone cold sober scientist-supermodel, or Damien Hirst as someone with an original thought in his head.

*HUGH Bonneville showed his arse in episode one. It was the “TV joy of the year” according to Downton Abbey under-butler Thomas. Although for a moment I mistook it for Carson.

*IS it me or would ITV’s 2013 Animal Honours have been a lot more fun if they’d done it live... on Bonfire Night? *PUDSEY wasn’t honoured. He was never that good a dancer. Two left feet...

*NEXT from ITV: Paul O’Grady’s pooch Eddie turns detective in the thrilling series Neuter She Wrote...

DEFIANCE comes with sexy new aliens, including Stahma (Jaime Murray), a scheming Castithan, and Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas) a volatile Votan. Sadly the ropy scripts suggest these sci-fi sirens are unlikely to make the same impact on us as Seven Of Nine, Caprica Six or triple-boobed Mary on Total Recall (mentioned purely for her acting ability. Cough.)

*WHY is EastEnders on the slide? Is the tired writing, repetitive plots, unconvincing characters... or the fact that there hasn’t been a happy ending here since they shut Gilly’s massage parlour?

*BIG drama on The Village – the horse got conscripted and John Middleton sprained his face attempting to smile. The series shed a million and a half viewers in its first three weeks. Tsk. Something else to for them to be miserable about.

*OZZY and Sharon Osbourne divorcing? No! Poor Oz is reeling from the shock. He’d completely forgotten they were still married.

*OVER on The Voice, Jessie J warned that “Being female in this competition is scary.” True. You might get chatted up by Jessie J.

SMALL Joys of TV: Suzi Perry, F1 – worth a few laps. Bernard Ingham’s eyebrows. Brian Murphy in Plebs. Corrie directors using every trick in the book to conceal Julie’s real-life pregnancy. Holly Willoughby ending This Morning’s Thatcher funeral special with the promise “Tomorrow, Bruce Forsyth.”

SEPARATED at birth: Corrie’s Julie Carp and Mrs. Potato Head... Runners-up: George Osborne and the Wizard of Oz Tin man. RANDOM irritations: Jessie J’s desperation. Paul Merton – lazy, over-rated and way past his prime. Janine Butcher failing to win Top Bitch at the Animal Honours.

*SO who’s the killer on Broadchurch? Either the slippery vicar, or Ellie’s emasculated husband Joe, I reckon. But here’s the bigger question: can ludicrous DCI Hardy make it to the end tomorrow without conking out?

JOHN Torrode was talking about flavour when he moaned to a Masterchef contestant: “You were promising me something was going to explode into my mouth.”

April 18. There are no special St George’s Day themed programmes on TV next week. But this is a handy guide to events around the country.

The MIPTV trade fair has drawn up a list of the all-time Top 50 Most Influential TV Shows. Ludicrously it features The Voice, Fort Boyard and Wheel Of Fortune but not The Sopranos, Life On Earth or The Avengers. I’m not entirely sure what they mean by influential – if it’s most copied then Opportunity Knocks, Candid Camera and Jerry Springer should be in with a shout. If it’s unmissable and entertaining then there are strong cases to me made for Seinfeld, Steptoe & Son, I Claudius and The Morecambe & Wise Show. No doubt the compilers are too young to have seen The Sweeney, the original Generation Game or Sunday Night At The London Palladium.

April 17. BBC1 supplied better coverage of the Thatcher funeral than ITV, although Dimbleby was well under-par. Mercifully Channel 4 didn’t have a shot at it, so we were spared Dr Christian’s analysis of Bernard Ingham’s eyebrow problem and Gok Wan’s thoughts on how Fergie could look good naked. “Are we all Thatcherites now? Over to you, Rylan Clark, Paddy Doherty and Abu Qatada... ”

April 14. BRITAIN’S Got Talent is back, bestriding Saturday night telly like a sparkly camp colossus. Over-blown, cocky, self-indulgent and occasionally embarrassing... these are just some handy ways to describe David Walliams. The show itself is still cracking entertainment. It started with some old favourites exploding around Covent Garden to the upbeat strains of Walking On Sunshine. There were acrobats! Jonathan & Charlotte! Pudsey! And, um, Stavros Flatley - a reminder of the far-off days when the nation could be tickled pink by a simple Dad-and-lad wobbly-gut dancing novelty act... It felt like ITV were saying: “Come on then, BBC1, what have you got? Swivel chairs? Really? Is that it?”

The familiar mix of the good, the bad, and the barking mad followed. We got a blockhead in army greens impersonating a dog, and a pretend vicar who danced to Edelweiss with a broom done up as a nun. Incredibly no-one told him to kick the habit. Acts who were merely lousy included 2’s Country, old-hat mother & daughter country singers whose dreary warbling gave me achy-breaky ears. 2’s Country? More like Shania Pain and Dolly-Bolical.

Would-be comic Paul from Preston read feeble ‘gags’ from a sheet and turned the audience into a lynch mob. Cowell called them “the worst I’ve ever heard” – and he’s seen Walliams on Little Britain. The best stand-up couldn’t even stand up that well. Jack Carroll, 14, has cerebral palsy although he claimed he was “a professional gymnast.” And said people who saw him often assumed that “Harry Potter had had a nasty Quidditch accident.” Jack was smart, self-depreciating and naturally witty. “If I’m too energetic stop me, I don’t want to lose my benefits,” he quipped. If I said he had funny bones he’d probably turn that against himself too.

Top turns included Attraction, a breath-taking Hungarian shadow dance troupe, sultry singer Alice Fredenham, and Arixandria, 11, a little girl with the big voice... and a name direct from Benny Hill’s Chinese typewriter.

Small things grated: Simon’s fixation with ropy lap-dancers, Amanda turning on the waterworks at will, David over-doing the ‘bromance’ baloney with Cowell. Seriously, stop. You’re filling more sick buckets than the nurovirus. He can be funny, but he needs reining in. David’s best moment? Telling a lousy singer: “I thought you were more suited for The Voice.” Translation: up yours, Auntie.

*DID you see the fella queuing up in a monkey mask? We never found out if he was an act or an advance guard for a dogging display team. Britain’s Got Perverts.

DOCTOR Who faced a deadly new foe last night – a Martian ice warrior. Imagine Alien in an Iron Man suit running amok on a on a Soviet nuclear sub... It was almost as scary as Cora Cross cavorting to Horny, Horny, Horny on EastEnders. Marty had been woken up after a 5,000 year kip; he was so grumpy he could have been auditioning for The Village. The ending was a little predictable – the Martian’s hand was hovering over the red button, like Will.I.Am’s evil twin, when his people came back for him. But at least this felt like a proper episode. Doctor Who has been shedding viewers lately. Here’s why: it’s become too much about his companions; so much so that actual stories have become throw-away. Last week the Doc made a deadly asteroid-sized parasite ‘god’ implode just by ranting at it. His reliance on the sonic screwdriver is a lazy cop-out - no need for invention if you can wave a magic wand. And they just can’t come up with baddies as memorable as the Daleks.

*OLD Marty dozed under a polar ice cap for 5,000 years - try explaining that to the boss. “Sorry I’m late guv, I got snowed in, and there was a helluva a tailback on the Milky Way.”

SOME grooms dream of enjoying a sweaty one-on-one grapple in a private room on their last night of freedom... but not with Phil Mitchell. Jack’s Walford stag night was the most miserable in the wretched soap’s long and gloomy history. He ranted against strip clubs and sneered: “What next, poker?” (Why not? He often plays.) Jack was marrying Sharon but still carries a torch for Ronnie. Hmm, who to choose – a loose-knickered pill-popping addict or a child-snatching psycho-bitch? It’s like having to decide between the lash or the birch. In truth, Jack’s already had the (sour) cream of Walford womenfolk - Tanya, Roxy, Rainie, Chelsea, Sam. Who else is there? Kat is like Kim Jong-un in a skirt, Whitney’s damaged goods, Lucy looks like she’d snap in half. Only Kirsty is worth the agg. Jack should come back when she and Max tire of each other. I’d give it a month.

HOT on TV: Margaret: Death Of A Revolutionary... Off Their Rockers (ITV) – you’ve been Zimmer-framed... Diana Rigg (Game Of Thrones)... new Big Bang Theory (E4).

ROT on TV: The Village – relentlessly grim... Claudia Winkleman – the minge with the fringe... Great British Sewing Bee – total stitch-up... The Intern – con-job.

STEPHEN Mulhern does a decent job fronting Catchphrase, but am I alone in thinking, “It’s good but it’s not right”? This is Roy Walker’s show! How would Roy’s family respond if asked to “Say what you see”?

*STEPHEN’S catchphrase is: “Keep pressing and guessing” which would have worked much better on There’s Something About Miriam.

THE Sex Clinic does us all a favour. It says: steer clear of these people - they’re shameless, reckless and diseased. They’re also abusing the NHS. What’s the answer? Should repeat visitors be charged extra, or should the nurses just smear those intimate swabs with Deep Heat?

ANN Widdecombe was spectacularly useless on Five Minutes To A Fortune. But the virginal ex-MP did tell Davina she was “saving the big ones for the end.” By Ron and Jeremy! Even Tommy Lee couldn’t get that sloshed.

*DAVINA keeps shrieking: “Stop the drain!” Is that cash or viewers?

SMALL Joys Of TV: Mad Men. The Johnny Cash Columbo repeat. Charles Bradley (Later Live). The righteous death of Tiberius on Spartacus – at the hand of Kore, the slave woman he raped.

RANDOM Irritations: the BBC’s in-built bleeding heart bias. Way too much chat on Being Human USA (but the ghost is hot). Lousy European acts on BGT. Why? We’ve got our own crap.

SEPARATED at birth: Sharon Watts and a Lhasa Apso dog; one a dumb, easily-fooled creature who’s been offered many a bone; the other a pooch. Runners-up: Les Dennis and Mark Thatcher.

*I’M enjoying New Castle (Alibi) but don’t think much of their Geordie accents.

MAY Martin was talking about stitching on the Great British Sewing Bee when she said: “The bust line in a woman is a starting point.” Although it’s polite to offer her a drink first.

April 7. JONATHAN Creek should have been the run-away hit of BBC1’s Bank Holiday schedule. Instead The Curse Of The Savant’s Thumb turned out to be the biggest missed opportunity this side of Scott Parker’s open goal.

Creek scripts are renowned for their fiendish cleverness, for unlocking mysteries more complex than dark matter, the Chinese alphabet and Colonel Sanders’s secret recipe. This time the plotting wasn’t so much headless as legless. Writer David Renwick packed in more red herrings than a nuked North Korean trawler. The convent school mystery, all crazed nuns and LSD, had nothing to do with the central death, the sinister secret society turned out to be a magic club, while the ending seemed bolted on from Spooks. It felt like a mess of unrelated story-lines knitted together for no apparent reason.

In fairness, it started well. JC had got himself a slick new job in advertising courtesy his new wife, the even slicker Sarah Alexander. And the puzzle was intriguing: dead man disappears from locked room. But the story’s central plank didn’t hold up. What loving daughter, learning that her dear old Dad had been beheaded, would merrily stick his bonce on top of a freshly made scarecrow to fool her Mum?

Nigel Planer played the super-smart satirist decapitated by an unpowered chainsaw. Joanna Lumley was his ex-convent schoolgirl wife, happily under the doctor. Rik Mayall was back as modern Ironside D.I. Gideon Pryke; his wheelchair apparently blessed with Dalek-style anti-gravity technology. And Renwick threw in some decent gags. I liked Planer’s comedy vicar, Lesley Clitoris - “the BBC thought it was the chap who wrote the Saint”.

Naturally it took just minutes for Sheridan Smith’s Joey to coax Creek back into the duffle-coat. But logic fell apart as quickly as a soap marriage. A special that should have been a small joy revived felt more like a dead horse being flogged. And the unspoken message – religion is nuts – didn’t seem very Easter. There was an unanswered question too. Who tried to strangle Sheridan? I’m guessing it could have been anyone who’d suffered eight years of her in Two Pints.

*IF Jonathan Creek is so smart how come he always finishes last on QI?

GAME Of Thrones is the War Of The Roses meets Lord Of The Rings, an epic fantasy as complicated as chess but far more bloody. Series three opened in the frozen wastes north of The Wall, where an army of undead White Walkers is advancing; putting human squabbles into perspective. It’s heart-warming to see so many great British actors in something so glorious – Ciaran Hinds is the latest. But why isn’t the BBC making drama this good? US subscription channel HBO has set the pace for 14 years. The Sopranos and The Wire inspired a new golden age of TV drama, opening doors for quality series such as The Shield, The West Wing, Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Yet the Beeb, featherbedded by the licence fee, prefers to lazily churn out soapy melodramas, appalling comedies, sinking soaps and sewing bees tailor-made for yawns. Have they no vision, no ambition? The BBC has many problems – trust, bias, pointless empire building. But the real test for new boss Tony Hall is: can he kick-start creativity? It’s been a long time since Del-Boy, House Of Cards and Boys From The Blackstuff. Even Bodies and The Office feel like distant memories.

LIAM announced he was moving in with dad, Fick Rick on EastEnders; although if he really wanted to disappear under the radar, he’d just try and win The Voice. Bianca was horrified. But at least she wouldn’t have had to fork out for his new school uniform (stab vest, attack alarm, Mace... ). If the streets are mean, life at Walford High is just as dangerous. I hear the school canteen is introducing triangular flapjacks. Liam’s teacher is going to ask him to write an essay, ‘What I did over Easter’. Well I say essay, it’s more like a police witness statement.

HOT on TV: Game Of Thrones (Sky Atlantic)... Nathalie Emmanuel... Nicola Walker (Scott & Bailey)... Boss (More4).

ROT on TV: It’s Kevin – it’s still cobblers... The Intern – I’m out... The Great British Sewing Bee – sew-sew... Mindy’s chipmunk voice (Mindy Project)... Heading Out – don’t come back.

*THEY had a cruel alien parasite god on Doctor Who, fed by song and human souls. In a related story, next Saturday Simon Cowell returns with Britain’s Got Talent.

*I COULDN’T watch Dogging Tales at home. So I gave next door the preview DVD and watched it through their French windows.

*ONE old trout said she saw random sex with strangers as “foreplay” before bedding her husband. Wasn’t that Kat Moon’s defence?

*A PET dog ate through its dead owner’s neck to relieve her of her head on Scott & Bailey. Did it also eat the script parts for believable male coppers?

*IT was Decapitation Week on telly. I spotted five headless corpses – sadly Mick Philpott wasn’t one of them.

*SHAMPOO manufacturers missed a trick. They should have launched a new product: Headless & Shoulders. Or perhaps just Shoulders.

*NO! Moaning rat-bag Sunita is dead on Corrie. I don’t know whether to be elated or delighted. Still at least it leaves the door open for Maya to return. OK, yes they called her ‘Mad’ but was she really any crazier than Tracy/Kirsty/Jackie Dobbs?

*RECREATE the Revolution experience! Watch the show in the dark with the telly off. It’s much more exciting.

RANDOM irritations: Doctor Who’s speechifying. The Voice’s poor contender-to-padding ratio. Jonathan Creek disappearing up shit creek. Alan Davies’s acting – he puts the ‘duff’ in duffle coat. The notion of the State bumping off a British satirist – they’re so toothless, why bother?

SMALL joys of TV: Animal masks on Dogging Tale – like Springwatch for perverts. Crixus’s last stand (Spartacus). The egg-swallowing snake (Easter Eggs Live) – it’d make Linda Lovelace’s eyes water. Slave army negotiations (Game Of Thrones).

*LOCK up your razor blades! The Village makes EastEnders seem like ChuckleVision. The grim existence and leaden plot has driven misery-guts dad John to drink. I’m with you, bruv. Tonight Munch’s Scream moves in next door and villagers start hanging themselves from the Maypole.

SEPARATED at birth: Caroline Noakes, MP, and Eddie Izzard. Runners-up: the bald cop with the goatee in Scott & Bailey and C4’s alleged 40-year-old virgin.

TV Maths. Michel Roux + Obama = Giancarlo Esposito (Revolution).

THIRTY years after The Young Ones, Rik’s a TV detective, Nigel’s playing a corpse while Ade hosts a gentle day-time countryside show. Russell Brand, this will be you! Roll on We Are Sayling – Alexei Sayle’s guide to yachting with the gentry.

DAVID was negotiating on Dickinson’s Real Deal when he said to a woman: “I’ve got two £50 notes here, what would you say if I give you one?” I give up. Thank you?