Lovely Bits of Old England: John Betjeman at The Telegraph

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This verb perfectly describes the clumsy and invariably futile attempt to mend a broken item. For example, if the tape has come off the handlebars on your bike, don’t go to a professional bike repair shop and pay through the nose for the application of expensive “bike tape” by a man who knows what he’s doing — perish the thought! Instead, grab some cheap sellotape from the newsagent’s and affix it to your handlebars yourself! Who cares if the end bits continue to flap in the wind? You’ve just perfected the British art of “bodging it,” and that’s far more important right now. Whether the village was once much larger or located in a different place, though, is just one of those of mysteries of history that keeps rearing its hard-to-prove head. There are three primary reasons for this. First, he was a poet, the first best-selling English poet since Byron. (They shared a publisher, John Murray.) Some of his contemporaries supposed that he was only capable of writing doggerel. As a boy he was taught by TS Eliot, when the great American modernist was a master at Highgate Junior School. Betj was a friend and admirer of WH Auden.

Bitterley is surrounded by history, from hill forts to castles - not to mention the Norman church or the hoard of English Civil War coins found in the last decade - so it would've definitely played an important role in Britain's, and Shropshire's past. Coin hoard discovered in Bitterley in 2011 And in Chernobyl, he played Anatoly Dyatlov. In a downbeat, dread-soaked miniseries about catastrophic lapses of judgment, the sneering, lazy Dyatlov was the closest thing to an all-out villain. It was Dyatlov’s arrogant ineptitude that caused a routine test to result in the worst nuclear plant disaster in the history of the planet. To those who only knew Ritter’s work on Friday Night Dinner, Dyatlov’s casual cruelty was a revelation. It was hard to watch the show without fully hating him. With the help of villagers and a local archaeology group, the Time Team crew dug multiple test pits and trenches and found lots of Medieval pottery, but the land surveys "identified no traces of an abandoned Medieval settlement." Sure, Shakespeare was British, but modern-day Brits are decidedly less wordy. Long gone are the days where we would greet each other in the street with a formal “How do you do, Sir?” (while tipping our hats and waving our handkerchiefs in the air). Nowadays, your average Brit under the age of 40 is far more likely to greet their friends or loved ones with a curt “Alright?”It’s an embarrassment of riches obviously, but I particularly like the episodes where Dad takes centre stage and Paul is let off the leash. The Fox, The Tin of Meat, The Plastic Bag all spring to mind. Second, as well as being remembered as a great poet, Betjeman was the man who helped us look at our architectural heritage and appreciate it. When they restored St Pancras Station, rightly did they erect a statue of Betjeman on the platform overlooking the spot where the Eurostar trains pull in and out.

Robert [Popper] asked me to read the script, and I was just embarrassingly enthusiastic. Robert had created one of my favourite comedy shows of all time, Look Around You, and I was, and still am, a flustered red-faced fanboy around him. It is, therefore, very possible that there's an abandoned ghost town buried under or to the east of Bitterley, and the local theory proposed during the Time Team episode was that residents abandoned the old village because of the plague. Much of the land would have been used for agricultural purposes and over time the way the locals used the land may have changed. Things like technological advancement or a change of agricultural direction could easily prompt the moving of a village. Sadly, there's not much evidence that this happened either.Ahead of the broadcast of Friday Night Dinner: Ten Years And A Lovely Bit of Squirrel, Tom Rosenthal (who plays Jonny) and Simon Bird (Adam) share some of their best bits...

The Christmas special was great. Partly because there was something impudent about making a Jewish Christmas special. But mainly because it was the only time the whole gang, including Grandmas, both Horrible and Nice, were in the house together. It felt like a real family Christmas. Ahh good ol’ Blighty — or Britain, as you might know it — the little island anchored in the North Atlantic that is renowned for its great comedy and rich tapestry of accents. British English is much like the people of Britain themselves: down-to-earth and full of character. And nothing shows off the country’s character better than the kooky phrases which can be heard all across the land. In the past, Britain bequeathed onto the world the steam train, the telephone and, most importantly, the chocolate bar. So it’s fair to say that modern-day Brits have got a pretty impressive standard to live up to when it comes to the world of inventions and mechanics. Most Brits are therefore mortified by the thought of hiring an expensive expert to mend an item in need of repair, and we take pride in giving the repair job a go ourselves. But what if this repair job is of a low-quality, and doesn’t really get the job done? That’s what we call “to bodge something.”A dark day indeed when we lose the comedy greats. It is a great shame to lose Paul Ritter, and beyond his roles in The Limehouse Golem and Chernobyl , he will, inevitably, be remembered for his work on Friday Night Dinner . Infectious, light fun that gives as good as it takes. It is how Robert Popper, writer of every episode, crafts these stories and similar tones that we must cherish. That is the aim of Friday Night Dinner: 10 Years and a Lovely Bit of Squirrel , an initially earnest documentary trying to understand the love of the show that turns into a puff-piece feature set on showcasing the basic notes of a show that some may, somehow, be unaware of. When he failed to catch the little creature, Martin suddenly got angry and started hitting the candles. "Did you know there are places on the internet now where you can go to find girls?" Ahead of the launch of Friday Night Dinner: Ten Years and a Lovely Bit of Squirrel the stars of Robert Popper’s beloved sitcom, Tom Rosenthal (Jonny) and Simon Bird (Adam), share some of their best bits…

One, more jokey theory made during the Time Team episode at the end of day one, when the crew fancied a pint, was that the old village was abandoned because Bitterley doesn't have a pub. Simon: It was everything I hoped it would be. It had all the best elements of a traditional family sitcom - warmth and big, relatable jokes - but all filtered through Robert's unique, surreal, anarchic worldview. I thought we had the opportunity to make something that could be both popular but also weird and inventive.Simon: Robert [writer Robert Popper] asked me to read the script, and I was just embarrassingly enthusiastic. Robert had created one of my favourite comedy shows of all time, Look Around You, and I was, and still am, a flustered red-faced fanboy around him. Friday Night Dinner. Image shows from L to R: Jonny (Tom Rosenthal), Martin (Paul Ritter), Adam (Simon Bird)