Top 10 greatest comedy sketches on British TV ever

Remember when television sketch shows were funny? Morecambe & Wise, The Two Ronnies, Monty Python, The Fast Show... just hearing those names conjures up precious memories of nostalgic mirth. But anyone accidentally stumbling across Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping could be forgiven for thinking they were watching a documentary on Tourette's.

The Channel 4 series, hyped as the rebirth of sketch show comedy, is beyond dire. Ten writers, no laughs. What it does have though is swearing, an ineffable amount of it. Recurring sketch Sweary Aussie Drama is just people shouting obscenities at each other for no apparent reason. It makes you wonder why the ageing hipsters who run this clapped-out channel didn't just buy in Derek & Clive Get The Horn or the first Chubby Brown video. At least Roy's effing and jeffing includes punchlines.

Swearing can be funny - think of Malcolm Tucker on The Thick Of It, Larry David's beloved aunt, or the foul-mouthed perfection of Bernard Manning's panda gag. But swearing as a punchline? That's just lazy. And also a letdown, because Mitchell and Webb produced cracking sketches in their 2009 series. Gems included Homeopathic A&E, Numberwang (mocking inane TV quiz shows), and Nazi officers slowly realising that they're the bad guys.

This reboot is nobbled by anaemic writing and slack editing. You don't have to be a comedy dinosaur to realise how far it falls short of the classic comedy sketches of yesteryear, like Les Dawson's Cissie and Ada and Gerald the talking gorilla on Not The Nine O'Clock News. TV humour went darker with Brass Eye and Jam. Hale & Pace microwaved a cat. But nothing topped the bleakly comic moment a melancholy Syd Little stepped into a phone box to call a suicide helpline on The Little & Large Show. As soon as the call connected the phone box exploded...

Here is my entirely subjective all-time Top Ten of British TV sketches.

Glenda was duly whisked back to ancient Egypt to appear in one of Ernie's terrible plays, his rewrite of Antony & Cleopatra. Actually written by the brilliant Liverpudlian Eddie Braben, the 1971 sketch was full of classic comedy moment, including a burst of the Match Of The Day theme as Octavius Caesar (Eric) enters with his beloved Luton Town FC on his standard. "I'm sorry I'm late but I was irrigating the desert," he says, adding, "It's very difficult on your own."

Glenda displays pompous disdain throughout and even manages to keep a straight face delivering deliberately lousy lines like, "All men are fools and what makes them so is seeing beauty like wot I have got." Eddie's script throws in double meanings - Handmaiden (talking about Ernie's Mark Antony): "He loves you terribly!". Cleo: "I keep telling him that.". There's a failed attempt at ventriloquism: "I geg your garden!" and even the opening credits (Cast in order of ability) are full of gags. ‘First camel: Engelbert Humperdinck. Second and third camels: Peggy Mount. Miss Jackson's wardrobe: Steptoe and Son" etc

Eddie recalled, "Eric and Ernie always gave my scripts the final polish, those extra personal touches that come up in rehearsal." The immortal "What do you think of it so far?" - "Rubbish!" occurred to Eric during the filming of Antony and Cleopatra. It caught on and became part of the national vernacular.

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But the voice-over warns: "But, oh, dear, what's this? One of the women is about to embarrass us all." Cue reckless female dinner guest (Carla Mendonca) who argues the government "should stay off the Gold Standard, so that the Pound can reach a level that would keep our exports competitive."

Voice-Over: "The lady is foolishly attempting to join the conversation with a wild and dangerous opinion of her own. What half-baked drivel!"The men look at her contemptuously until she starts crying, dabbing her eyes with her napkin. She is grabbed by the arm and led off home as the voice over thunders: "WOMEN: KNOW YOUR LIMITS!" They then replay the scene "the proper way", with the woman saying, "Oh, I don't know anything about the Gold Standard, I'm afraid - but I do love little kittens. They're so soft, and furry."

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Finally Cleese explodes in a glorious rant insisting correctly that the parrot is "a stiff, bereft of life he rests in peace, it you hadn't nailed him to the perch he'd be pushing up the daisies..." before concluding "He's kicked the bucket, shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!" The sketch made such an impact that 21 years later Prime Minister Thatcher recycled it to mock the Liberal Democrats' bird of liberty symbol, telling the Conservative Conference: "This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned, it has ceased to be" (etc). And then Maggie topped the joke by adding the Python catchphrase, "And now for something completely different."

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This builds rapidly as one recalls, "We used to live in a tiny old, tumbled down house with great holes in the roof." The luxury of house ownership is soon trumped by claims of living in a corridor, then an old water tank on top of a rubbish tip, then "a hole in the ground, covered by a couple foot of torn", then a "shoebox at middle o' motorway". The topper? "You were lucky. We lived for three months in a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank". Genius.

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The 1966 skit used height to hammer home the divide. Cleese's arrogant 6ft 5 gentleman towers over 5ft 8 Barker in his cheaper suit and homburg hat, who in turn looks down on 5ft Corbett in his flat cap and workman's jacket. Cleese has innate breeding but he's broke, so sometimes he says, bending his knees, "I look up to him (Barker)." Barker replies: "I still look up to him because although I have money, I am vulgar. But I am not as vulgar as him (Corbett) so I still look down on him."

Corbett: "I know my place. I look up to them both; but while I am poor, I am honest, industrious, and trustworthy. Had I the inclination, I could look down on them. But I don't." Finally Barker says, "We all know our place, but what do we get out of it?"

Cleese gets a feeling of superiority over them. Barker feels inferior to him, but superior to Corbett who ends the exchange with the pay-off, "I get a pain in the back of my neck." Not much has changed since this was broadcast in 1966. We still have a patrician elite who consider themselves superior to the now struggling middle classes. The big difference is the working class has split in two classes - the workers and a millions-strong underclass on benefits. Britain is still obsessed with class "breeding" and "innate superiority".

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This beautifully crafted exchange is arguably the Two Ronnies' finest sketch, remembered as fondly as their classic Mastermind skit. It illustrates Barker's writing genius and the BBC double act's perfect timing and delivery. A script for the sketch in Ronnie Barker's handwriting was discovered on Antiques Roadshow 19 years ago and authenticated by Ronnie Corbett. Its first draft was titled Annie Finkhouse. (Anything Else).

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