A Comedy On This Day: Sez Les (28 June 1974)

 John Cleese is still around, contributing to a few skits, the most interesting of which is a variant of the Monty Python argument sketch, with Dawson as an inveterate liar and Cleese testing the logic of the situation.

 By far the most impressive routine is a big wrestling set piece, with the usually invisible studio audience surrounding the ring and a surprising level of physical activity and risk for Dawson. Even though the comedy's target is the artificial violence and ritual of wrestling, once the routine involves Dawson crouching down while some big men repeatedly jump over him my reaction is to admire his nerves first, and to laugh as an afterthought.

 Musical entertainment comes from Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen, interpreting 'Cabaret'. They've gone multi-coloured since their many appearances on Morecambe & Wise and Arthur Haynes a decade earlier, with a much-hairier Ball resplendent in orange flares, rainbow shirt and navy and green check wide-lapel jacket.

 This week the Irving Davies Dancers accompany a performance of 'The Age of Aquarius' from Barbara Arnau. The men are topless, oiled and in white trousers and the women are dressed in bikinis and diaphanous white capes. The dancers emerge from under a carapace of ostrich feathers, initially in gyrating pairs, and then separate into concentric male and female circles. The men at one point raise the singer, who is wearing a gold chain bikini over a flesh-coloured catsuit. I think that the intended effect at the end of the song is for her to be submerged by the chorus of men, but rather unfortunately it looks as much like they are collectively groping her.