Who Stole Bob Monkhouse's Jokes? (C4)

The Truth About Take That (C4)

HAVE you heard the one about the comedian who wrote all his jokes in two books, called them his babies and slept with them by his bed?

There isn't a punch line as this is a true story. In 1995 Bob Monkhouse's hand-written books, containing a lifetime of jokes and sketches, went missing from a production office at BBC Television Centre in London.

Monkhouse left them in a steel case while recording a programme in a nearby studio. When he returned his "entire creative output" over two decades was missing. He offered a £10,000 reward for their return. The story made headlines, although the tone of the articles treated the theft as a bit of a joke. Monkhouse, though, was distraught at the loss of his gag books as his act relied not so much on his personality as his material.

Sixteen months later the books were returned but the mystery of who took them and where they'd been was never satisfactorily cleared up. And Who Stole Bob Monkhouse's Jokes? still left questions unanswered.

Monkhouse himself suspected the thief was comic Adrian Walsh, a warm-up act on his show and cruise cabaret funny man. According to fellow comedian Bernard Manning, Walsh certainly needed help with his act, which was "as funny as woodworm in a cripple's crutch".

Then a mystery South African entered the story, offering to return the books to Monkhouse's agent Peter Pritchard. Money changed hands. The police arrested him but the case was thrown out of court.

He maintained that he was acting on behalf of - and here the plot thickens to the point of curdling - for a BBC employer suffering from leukaemia whose son had found the books in a bin.

Having introduced this, the documentary failed to follow it up. The woman and her son were named but not interviewed. We didn't discovered what had happened to them. The whole truth never emerged - just as The Truth About Take That was more an exercise is raking over old muck than a fully-documented account of the rise and fall of the most successful British band since The Beatles.

Most of Take That had nothing new to say, and weren't interviewed. Howard Donald, now a DJ, was the most vocal. That wasn't always the case as on one recording, lead singer Robbie was backed by session singers rather than Gary, Mark, Howard and Jason.

Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell admitted passing on the group because he didn't think Gary Barlow looked like a lead singer. Indeed, it took Robbie Williams replacing Gary before the group really took off after years of trawling round schools and gay clubs.

Manager Nigel Martin-Smith banned them from smoking, drinking and having girlfriends. Unlike Bob's missing joke books, there was no mystery how they got round this - they sneaked girls in through hotel windows.