EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Spitting Image creator Roger Law fumes at Ian Hislop for claiming that he was the only participant to make any money out of the satirical puppet show

Spitting Image creator Roger Law was furious with Ian Hislop when the Have I Got News For You stalwart claimed during a recording of BBC Radio 4’s The Reunion that Law was the only participant to make any money out of the satirical puppet show. 

‘If there’s a silence after that on the broadcast version, it must be because I swore at him in response, and they’ve now cut that out!’ Law tells Radio Times. 

‘If I was as rich as he accuses me of being, then I’d almost be as rich as him!’ 

Could Roger be referring to the £20,000 the Private Eye editor supposedly trousers for every edition of the now jaded BBC’s HIGNFY?

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Spitting Image creator Roger Law (pictured centre) was furious with Ian Hislop

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Could Roger be referring to the £20,000 the Private Eye editor supposedly trousers for every edition of the now jaded BBC’s HIGNFY?

The EastEnders return of Michelle Collins, 25 years after the ‘death’ of her character Cindy Beale, is not the first time the BBC soap has dabbled with resurrection.

Original bad boy Dirty Den (Leslie Grantham) was shot and his body was dumped in a canal in 1989, but 14 years later he returned. 

Kathy Beale (Gillian Taylforth) also popped into the Queen Vic after a 15-year absence having not, after all, died in a South Africa car crash. 

Danny Dyer, who left the soap last year, went missing at sea but his body has never been found, leaving open the possibility of a fourth EastEnders character rising from the dead. 

That would put the producers one ahead of Jesus, who only managed to bring back three – Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter and the widow of Nain’s son.

Dame Joan Collins shares an unhappy encounter with Tony Curtis when she filmed an episode of The Persuaders. 

‘He called me the c-word in front of the whole crew – just because I wanted to walk back to the set instead of getting a ride with him on a terribly dangerous truck,’ wails Joan. 

‘Tony Curtis was a dreadful misogynist.’

Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer’s occasional co-star on Gone Fishing, Ted the dog, has become such a hit with viewers (he has 115,000 followers on Instagram) that his role has been bumped up for the next series. 

Ted, a Patterdale terrier owned by Gone Fishing producer Lisa Clark, has been honoured with a spoof interview in Radio Times. 

Asked if he’d like more TV work, he barks: ‘I want to appear on Strictly Come Barking or Bones Under The Hammer.’

Melvyn Bragg, in his last South Bank Show (screened tonight), recalls wandering out of a Royal Academy of Arts dinner for a breath of fresh air and finding his friend David Hockney enjoying a fag. 

‘He [Hockney] said, ‘They won’t let me smoke inside for fear of starting a fire’. He laughed. ‘I think I counted over 30 candles just around the table they put me on’.’

Melvyn Bragg recalls wandering out of a Royal Academy of Arts dinner for a breath of fresh air and finding his friend David Hockney enjoying a fag (the pair are pictured together)

John Cleese confirms his GB News show will finally begin next month, declaring: ‘You should be prepared to be shocked.’ 

Could the delay – it was announced almost a year ago – be caused by the programme boffins conducting a fruitless search for Cleese’s funny bone, now missing in action since Fawlty Towers?

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