Comic Roots

Michael Palin looks back in languor at his meteoric rise to stardom from Sheffield (full address withheld), through Bnghtside and Carbrook Co-operative players, Brasenose Revisited, to Edinburgh's famed Parks and Burials Department, with the help of his Mum, his old geography teacher, Spike Milligan, Terry Jones, the boy next door and D. P. Gumby (full address withheld). But whether the roots of comedy are in nature or nurture is best left to the sociologists to decide...

'Dear Mum, I'm crying as I write this letter, so please excuse the tearstains ...' wrote 12-year-old Billy Dainty after he got his first taste of show business. He grew up to become the back legs of a dancing donkey. In tonight's programme he meets up again with his front legs, and gives an unlikely rendition of Hamlet.

Alexei Sayle was one of the founders of what has come to be known as 'alternative comedy'. His roots aren't in the traditional theatre but in the pubs and clubs more associated with the world of rock music. He started drinking in Liverpool when he was 14. "I never had any trouble getting served 'cos I've looked like this since I was three." At 17 he exchanged the pints of the northern pubs for the 'G and Ts' of London clubs. Alexei takes us on a memorable journey round the places which feed his imagination. We start at opening time and end ... well, in the early hours.

Kenneth Williams explores his roots in and around St Pancras where he grew up. Architecture, poetry, art and music were the formative influences on Kenneth Williams: the slum architecture of St Pancras where he grew up; the liquid poetry of his gran's fruity anecdotes; the art of the Marcel wave practised by his hairdresser father; and the musical knees-up of The Boot.