The most popular film-maker in history got into history, and stayed popular. Glyndebourne rose again, handsomely. Pop ate itself, but survived. Steve Coogan was everywhere, and so was Hugh Grant; only one of them is praised here. The theatre had a thin time, but television drama serials made up for it. People defined themselves on Mondays at 9pm: were you for `Cracker' or `Chuzzlewit'? And again on Saturdays at 8pm: did you really believe that a 14m-1 shot would win?(Or did you do it for love of the arts?) It wasn't the best of years, but it had its moments. And here they are, in the fourth annual `IoS' Awards

'LET'S face it, if we wanted to watch The Two Ronnies the only way we could do it was by getting the videotapes flown out all the way from Britain - it really was deprivation]'

Last seen on mods with Ben Sherman shirts to match, John Travolta in

Dennis Jeremiah (Spike) Mullins, writer: born London 12 October 1915; married 1947 Mary McMenamin (two sons); died Ascot 18 April 1994.

IT WOULD be most dreadfully sad, nay tragic, were Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to - how should one put it? - 'drop off her perch' before the next general election. But, as the wise old adage has it, every cloud has a silver lining. Beneath the stark tragedy of the event, the benefits accruing from the various funerals, memorial services, documentary series, commemorative trinkets, etc, would give an inestimable boost to Conservative fortunes.

Murder Most Horrid and Absolutely Fabulous have several things in common. They both rest on the shoulders of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. They're both predominantly directed by Bob Spiers. And they're both produced by Jon Plowman - the man behind the original French & Saunders series, behind Smith & Jones and Fry & Laurie, behind Comic Relief, the man who is BBC Head of Comedy Entertainment. He must be very powerful, this Jon Plowman. 'You could look at everything I've produced over the last few years,' he says, trying to help, 'and analyse a very sick man who has a very sick, sad sense of humour and lives a tragic life, surrounded by a lot of very dominant women'.

FORGET James Brown. The hardest working person in showbusiness is Newman and Baddiel's PR. The appearance of these 'rock star' comics at Wembley Arena on Friday was preceded by the sort of hype normally reserved for, er, rock stars. Almost inevitably, the show failed to live up to it.

A MAN in a gold-patterned waistcoat is perched on a barstool. His relaxed musings are punctuated with confidential questions: 'Isn't it irritating when . . ? Have you ever noticed how . . ?' This is the archetype of stand-up comedy, embodied by Barry Cryer (Assembly) in his show, 'That Reminds Me . . .'. Elsewhere in Edinburgh, there seems to be a move among comics away from such conventional stand-up. But if it were all as accomplished as this, they wouldn't need to bother.

THE BBC has officially taken the 'light' out of light entertainment. On Monday it announced the appointment of David Liddiment as head of the Entertainment Group for Television, replacing Jim Moir, head of the Light Entertainment Group.

MAKING a documentary about the British and class can only be compared to shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. Is there anything more to be added to this strip-mined topic that the famous Sixties John Cleese / Ronnie Barker / Ronnie Corbett 'Upper class, middle class, lower class' sketch didn't wittily announce and denounce in a record four minutes?

BILL COTTON, managing director of BBC Television from 1984 to 1988, said last week that the corporation was in danger of making a 'colossal mistake' in abandoning its role as 'the backbone of the entertainment industry in Britain.'

There is a school of thought which holds that wit has no place in situation comedy; that what the genre and its audience demand is not verbal inventiveness but the comfort of cliche, stereotype and stock situations - a dependable and unchallenging half an hour of bossy wives, harassed husbands and precocious children, folk wisdoms and bawdy asides.

BBC Television wants to launch a BBC 3, BBC 4 and BBC 5, all funded by advertising, as early as next year, writes Martin Wroe.

THIS WHOLE pop music thing has been a terrible mistake. Classical is best. Nigel Kennedy is a lovable rogue. The strident harmonies and frantic kitsch of