I'm screwed if I do, buggered if I don't. I don't see how I can emerge from writing this without being in trouble. If I write it, I'm almost certain to be labelled a BBC suckbutt, and I'm almost certain to make enough factual errors to be a broadcasting outcast. But on the other hand, I can't resist it, because I think if by any horrible chance people and the law do start really to chip away at the bit of the BBC I know, we're all buggered.
Here's the thing - the BBC's record in acted comedy has been, and still is, miraculous. I've tried to compile a list of genuinely popular acted comedy programmes that I can remember over the last 40 years (without consulting books). When you read it, the BBC list looks pretty good. Time and time again, from Steptoe through to Yes Minister, from the Young Ones to Bottom, from Fawlty Towers to Absolutely Fabulous, from Monty Python to Only Fools and Horses, the history of British TV comedy really is very nearly the history of comedy on the BBC.
I went into comedy in the first place because of the joy I got from Monty Python as a schoolboy. A third of our laughter at school was just quoting Python, and I believe all over the country people quote the Fast Show, or Harry Enfield's characters. If one of Britain's great characteristics is its comedy, then the BBC deserves enormous credit for indulging it and supplying it.
Just look at the list - it's freakish how the BBC have continued, no matter how much the media environment changes, to come out with a huge proportion of the funny things on television. Reviewers are getting increasingly mad, claiming that one bad first episode of a new series means the BBC is totally down the drain. But through all the criticism the BBC have still produced or commissioned Absolutely Fabulous, One Foot in the Grave, Only Fools, the totally remarkable I'm Alan Partridge and the revolutionary and brilliant Royle Family. Against these, in terms of quality, there's only Father Ted and Drop the Dead Donkey - and the writers of Father Ted started with the BBC, and did the experimental, wonderful Big Train for the BBC, and have just done Hippies for the BBC.
In the world of sketches, Channel 4 has recently been doing some great work - Smack the Pony, Miller and Armstrong, Brass Eye, The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, the 11 O'Clock Show - but they have to stack up against The Day Today, Goodness Gracious Me, the Fast Show, Big Train, French and Saunders, Harry Enfield and Chums - all at the BBC.
The problem with the "BBC-surprisingly-damn-good-at-comedy-year-after-year" thing is that no one knows how it happens, or why it happens.
One reason is the radio. There are waves of stuff flowing from Radio 4 comedy, where The Hitchhiker's Guide, Goodness Gracious Me and People Like Us started, as did the people of Not the Nine O'Clock News and The Day Today. People learn their craft and then move to TV at the right time. God pray that link is never severed.
And then there's something about the very casualness of the BBC. After The Young Ones, Ben Elton wrote Filthy Rich and Catflap and Happy Families, which actually were rather weird and wonderful - but not very successful. But this didn't throw the BBC off its course. Elton went on to do Blackadder and Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson went on to do Bottom. Blackadder One was awful, and yet they let us do Blackadder Two, which was better, except the terrible episode with the false breasts. Even Only Fools wasn't very successful till about series three. Men Behaving Badly wasn't very successful on ITV, but the BBC spotted its potential. The Mrs Merton Show was a deeply odd little pilot, cleverly picked up by the BBC. The BBC may be a lot of things - but still, even now, the BBC isn't scaredy cat.
Then there's the unique relationship between BBC2 and BBC1, which tragically doesn't exist between Channel 4 and ITV. BBC2 experiments - then BBC1 reaps the benefit: the Royle Family jumped stations. Vic and Bob have moved, French and Saunders moved, David Renwick and Andrew Marshall did Not the Nine O'Clock News on BBC2 and then moved on, separately, to One Foot and 2.4 Children on BBC1.
And, finally, my experience in the BBC is that, once they commission you, they're not very interfering.
That's a few vague guesses - I can't get to the bottom of it - but the end result is one of the great things about Britain's popular culture. I've never understood people who claim that American sitcom is much better than ours. When Americans are good, they make a lot more episodes - but America produces about the same number of classic sitcoms as we do here in Britain. In the 60s, they had I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke, while we had Till Death Us Do Part and Hancock and Steptoe and Son. In the 70s, they had Soap and Mary Tyler Moore, while we had Yes Minister and Fawlty Towers and Dad's Army. In the 80s, they had Cheers and Taxi while we had Only Fools and Horses and The Young Ones. In the 90s, they've got Friends, Larry Sanders, Seinfield and Frasier - but we've had Father Ted, Absolutely Fabulous, Men Behaving Badly, the Royle Family, One Foot in the Grave.
So it's very nearly the truth, then, that one little department in our organisation - allied with and giving a platform to a cluster of brilliant independents - is producing the same amount of extraordinary work as the entire massive multi-network, huge and highly paid American system.
It's fun to attack the BBC - but as Joni Mitchell said, beware, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." In acted comedy, the sheer figures show it's the job of everyone else in TV to show that they could do anything like the job the BBC does before they damage the ability of BBC TV and radio to produce comedy.
I hope that when the licence fee is discussed, and argued about, this is taken into consideration. Comedy can be expensive and the licence fee helps ensure that the BBC can experiment. It's a cliché that comedy is ignored. Actors never get Oscars for it, and there are 10 times more books about Shakespeare's tragedies than his comedies. But comedy is a serious chunk of what's best in British literature, British life and, till now, British telly - and it's a chunk of TV that just might die if we're not all careful. It would be grisly if we'd just lived through the funny century - and were casually moving towards one where we laugh less, because people thought the comedy miracle of the BBC was just an unimportant sideshow, just a joke.
Those classic comedies
BBC
Hancock's Half Hour
Steptoe and Son
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Till Death Us Do Part
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
That Was the Week that Was
Not the Nine O'Clock News
The Liver Birds
The Likely Lads
Morecambe and Wise
To the Manor Born
Fawlty Towers
The Two Ronnies
Porridge
Open all Hours
Only Fools and Horses
Just Good Friends
Dear John
The Good Life
The Day Today
I'm Alan Partridge
The League of Gentlemen
Dinner Ladies
Terry and June
Three of a Kind
French and Saunders
Absolutely Fabulous
Murder Most Horrid
Let Them Eat Cake
The Vicar of Dibley
Yes Minister
The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin
The Mary Whitehouse Experience
Blackadder
People Like Us
The Royle Family
Hi de Hi
It Ain't Half Hot Mum
Mrs Merton
Waiting for God
The Fast Show
The Thin Blue Line
As Time Goes By
Bread
Butterflies
Game On
2.4 Children
Men Behaving Badly
Reeves and Mortimer
Birds of a Father
Goodness Gracious Me
The Young Ones
Hippies
Dad's Army
ITV
The Army Game
Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width
Dustbin Men
Rising Damp
Agony
Watching
Rik Mayall Presents
Cold Feet
Morecambe and Wise
Spitting Image
Mr Bean
Man About the House
Hale and Pace
Benny Hill
The New Statesman
Hot Metal
Is it Legal?
Whoops Apocalypse
Doctor in the House
Channel 4
Father Ted
Drop the Dead Donkey
Absolutely
Armstrong and Miller
Spaced
Smack the Pony
Vic and Bob's Big Night
The 11 O'Clock Show
Brass Eye
Desmonds
The Comic Strip
The Rory Bremner Show
