Fat Tony.

In many ways I’ve had the perfect evening, by watching a few of my favourite Simpsons episodes with my wife and a bottle of wine (not one and the same) closely followed by Tony Hancock’s The Blood Donor to round off.

While both series are amongst my go-to wind-down choices, with me watching C4’s evening showing of The Simpsons almost every day of the week at 6pm and catching up on the radio broadcast of Hancock’s Half Hour on BBC Radio 4 Extra every Monday, we decided to treat ourselves by making a rapidly lengthening list of what we see as some of the best ever Simpsons shows to work our way through online.

Both programmes are impeccably written when they’re at their best and are prone to make me laugh out loud time and again. The Simpsons shows we’ve got through so far - we actually started yesterday are:

·      ‘King-Size Homer’: Homer puts on weight so he can work from home; probably my all-time favourite episode, though to be fair, the goalposts move regularly.

·      ‘A Fish Called Selma’: Actor Troy McClure marries Selma in attempt to shake tales of his fish-loving (in the most inappropriate sense of the phrase) past; another personal favourite.

·      ‘Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily’: Bart, Lisa and Maggie wind up in the custody of Ned and Maude Flanders with crazy results.

·      ‘Homer Versus the Eighteenth Amendment’; Homer makes and sells his own alcohol in the midst of showndown.

·      ‘Mountain of Madness’: Homer takes his family on a teambuilding exercise to do with work and ends up in a rocket house.

(I’ll have to eventually post the whole list for reference.)

As for watching The Blood Donor, this came about as a result of my wife giving blood yesterday thus making it appropriate. While the episode often comes up in the most popular lists, it’s not a personal favourite of mine, I think partly because I know it was shot using cue cards, which ruins the magic for me, making the dialogue a little more stilted. Hancock obviously gives a pitch perfect reading (he was reknowned for it) and it was still a great way to end the evening, even if it wouldn’t have been my first choice; sometimes reveling in a little of your favourite television shows is a good diversion.