One of my weekend treats is listening to Just A Minute on a Sunday at noon, before we leave for my dad's house. Although I am reasonably new to the show as a regular, I have been aware of it for a long time. The light-hearted panel show has recently turned 45 years old, and to celebrate they are doing a television version for the next ten weekdays. While it was pleasant viewing, the television show didn't really offer anything that we don't already get from the Radio 4 show. Although it was exactly how I pictured it in my mind.

I do feel that this is a show, along with I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, that belongs on radio. Radio allows you to use your imagination in a way that television cannot allow, which is why it is always a bit of a pity when programme makers seem to have one eye on the 'promotion' to telly. The move to television shouldn't been considered a promotion at all, as even by today's technology, nothing replaces imagination. I still have the tapes of a Radio 4 series called On The Town With The League Of Gentlemen. One of the characters is the local shopkeeper, who is only a couple of inches high and needs helping up and down the counter. This wasn't possible in 1999, and so Edward and Tubbs were created. As good as The League Of Gentlemen was, it didn't quite live up to the brilliance of the radio series. The same applies to Little Britain.

Graham Norton stated during an episode of the Radio 2 series The Comedian's Comedian that even animation would have had a problem translating Round The Horne to a visual medium, and he is right. The Goon Show is another example of radio's advantage over television. During the 1950s there was one exception to the rule, Hancock's Half Hour. With no cosmetic change to the format, Galton and Simpson created two separate series with no crossover. Normally, the first series of a television adaptation, (The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Fist Of Fun, and The League Of Gentlemen being guilty) contains re-written radio scripts. Hancock's Half Hour was both a television and radio series, with no dip in quality. In the 1970s, television shows such as The Likely Lads, Dad's Army, Steptoe And Son and Fawlty Towers were remade as radio shows. Situation comedy isn't of a sufficient quality these days for this to work.