i think just a minute was best in the mid-seventies to the late eighties, in the days of the big four: clement freud, peter jones, derek nimmo and kenneth williams. kenneth williams gave the show extraordinary energy and unruliness and exhibited an entire range of styles - extreme campness, erudite drawl, brash cockney, dramatic recital, theatrical wails, and the daft, greasy, snide voice he used on hancock (now stop messin' about!). and he threw beautiful tantrums (oh how he ranted - once when nicholas disallowed a challenge of hesitation because someone hadn't started he said: whether you’d started or not is hardly the point. we’re not here running a charitable organisation for your disabilities, for some old derelict to sit there that we’ve all got to worry about! oooh, i’ve hardly started! you can hear his bones creaking in his joints! look at the mind, you can see it working, look!) when bbc7 broadcasts shows from the archives they never do go back further than the early 90s, so that derek and peter and clement show up - occasionally even in the same show - but never kenneth williams - i've had to hunt down 15 or so episodes from the early days to hear his remarkable playing style, and from disliking it i have come to enjoy it.

peter jones has the funniest lines, making clever interruptions and making the loveliest put downs. when you listen to recordings from the mid 80s, his style was different, sharper, quicker, and more argumentative, but you can still recognise his characteristic self-deprecating, lovable, dry wit. the ones he features in on bbc7 were recorded in his late 70s - and he was incredibly hesitant - but everyone lets him get away with it - douglas adams called his last years on just a minute "sublime incompetence" - the way his own vagueness and hesitancy is cultivated deliberately into a type of comic performance. derek and clement gave the game the real competitive edge - and they challenged ruthlessly. and i suppose it's their four distinct voices - kenneth's drawn syllables verging on histrionic, derek's wonderfully plummy voice as he spins a surreal tale, peter making an arch remark in his regionless, slightly nasal, exquisitely dry voice, and the deep voice and slow, slightly off-kilter rhythm of clement freud, slightly cruel and manipulative.

in the 35th anniversary documentary nicholas said that the younger comedians have taken the show in a different direction today, and that it's funnier now, but they have lost the edge the show used to have - because, nicholas said, then, the panellists were his contemporaries. funny as the shows are now, i can never quite enjoy them as much as the episodes from before the 80s and before - on those shows the four had incredible rapport - they performed together - this is clearest in one of the shows where kenneth williams chaired and nicholas was on the panel with the other three - the real tension came from the way the panelists were constantly forming and switching alliances, cottoning on and participating in changing tactics. marvellous, truly.