'Television criticism has much in common with selling spirituous liquor or taking the veil. You don't get out much' December 1978 Here, at last, is a collection of Nancy Banks Smith's writing so we can bask in her bone-dry humour, 'I dearly love to see actors drowning, it is so obviously not quite what they had in mind when they were at RADA'; wisdom, 'Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman'; and top drawer prose, 'Mandelson seems to pick his words with tweezers while wearing latex gloves'. Organised by theme, from Soap and Glory to Murders Most Horrid, TV Dinners to Guilty Pleasures, this book is a blissful trip down TV memory lane and reminds us why Nancy Banks Smith is one of our best- loved writers.

Nancy Banks-Smith is a TV and radio critic. She started out writing for the Northern Daily Telegraph, and has worked at the Sunday Mirror, Daily Herald and Daily Express. She was the TV critic at the Sun and began writing for the Guardian in 1969. In 1970 she was recommended for an OBE which she declined.