“cake on the bird table” made me laugh, as the tangled, fibrous wiring in my disorganised mind connected that line with the single released by (world champion match angler) Bob Nudd back in the early 90s, which was imaginatively titled “Maggots in Your Catapult”.

GobTV pitched to make the video for Bob, but sadly we were unable to meet his exacting standards. Perhaps he imagined that we were taking the piss (we weren’t, we saw no conflict between making videos for Skunk Anansie one minute, and champion anglers the next).

There was a gag in the script where Bob stood, as if giving a lecture next to a large flip chart. On the front page was the legend TENCH, accompanied by a picture of a tench. He flipped it over, and pointed with his pointy stick to the next illustration, a Roach, correctly labelled as a ROACH. He flipped again to reveal the word PIKE, which was illustrated by a photo of Ian Lavender in Dad’s Army gear. This reduced Robert Lloyd and myself to tears of mirth, but Steven Wells, my co-writer/director, didn’t think it was funny at all. The more he protested, the funnier the gag seemed to become.

Perhaps you had to be there, but for a second, when I read John’s line, I was. It made me giggle.