Heated Rollers

Don't bother. It is truly bad. Uninspired. You can see where each sketch is going. Feels like comedy writing by numbers. There's a horrible sense of "that'll do" hanging over the whole thing, as though the script was a first draft which more or less hung together so no one pushed to make it better. Whether the blame lies with the producer or the writers I don't know.

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Er, no - it was heard on the most recent broadcast. I also remember hearing it some time ago on a John Shuttleworth programme. For once his bemusement at the world was wholly understandable. Has to be the worst bakery-related song ever. And no, I'm not inviting a series of dreadful puns on song titles in response. It was bad enough hearing those piscatorial gems on another programme recently.

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"some kind of penance we have to pay for the nice bits"

Er, I rather thought we had that already ... [paste in specifics to taste from my posts on Another Thread for that full interactive effect]

But yes, today's show was especially vacuous - especially that song about space; that really was the final frontier for me. Heated Rollers, is it? I've had more laughs listening to the Bay City variety.

To set the show in context, it might be worth searching out the book It's Not a Runner Bean, in which he has a go at acts around the same period such as all-male troupe The Joeys and Jennie Lecoat (not Eclair). His contention (not mine; I don't know either act well enough to feel strongly) is roughly that they got away with it because of the mood of the times but there was little lasting talent there.

Heated Rollers is an odd one, however, because some of the contributors, like Briony Lavery, are now successful and respected playwrights. So who is at fault at what point in the chain of command? Why is the whole show so unremittingly bad?