My Hero. BBC 1. Friday August 4. 8.30 pm.

Anyone who’s read my blog on a regular, or even infrequent, basis would be of the opinion that being cynical and disliking stuff comes natural to me. Which it does. But, occasionally, there are some people who I find it hard to whip up much enmity for, even though they probably merit it. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are good examples of this, ‘comedians’ who’d I’d normally want to despatch with rapier-like putdowns or even a rapier, if I hadn’t handed mine in at the last knives amnesty.

But the truth is, until now, I just haven’t had the heart to do it. Whenever I see them it’s like they metamorphasize into puppies in a pet shop window, and I’m compelled to give them a doggy biscuit and pat them on the head.

However, after watching the latest episode of My Hero, not only do I feel more than ready to put them down, but I could probably ‘put down’ a few pups while I’m at it.

For this series Ardal O’Hanlon has been replaced by James Dreyfus, a casting choice that Father Dougal would acknowledge could only have been made by a feckin’ eejit. I appreciate that Dreyfus might not want to get typecast in roles playing an incredibly camp gay man but, let’s be honest, it’s the kind of performance that does seem to come quite naturally to him. I don’t think Dreyfus could do straight even after he snuffs it and rigor mortis set in. But taking this casting decision a little further, does this mean that Robson Green and Gary Kemp are going to feel they are being typecast as always playing white men in TV and start auditioning for Jamaican Yardies in The Bill? If they did decide to shake up their typical script choices they’d manage this ethnicity transition more convincingly than Dreyfus does playing it straight. Rock Hudson he ain’t.

But the choice of casting wouldn’t be such a problem for the episode if it’s central theme didn’t revolve around Dreyfus’s character’s attempts to pick up a woman. Having no success with the woman (a case of art imitating life), he notices that his object of desire likes cats and is a big pussy lover (unlike Dreyfus) and decides that if you can’t beat ‘em, then join then, and drinks a serum another character has devised which allows him to develop cat-like tendencies.

Therefore, the entire episode revolved around setups where a human does stereotypical cat behaviours, which, of course, are automatically funnee, like coughing up furballs, bringing in dead birds in his mouth and licking his posterior. Actually, the latter didn’t happen as it was pre-watershed, but you get the picture. It’s a pretty lazy plot device for getting laughs, much like the assumption that watching a celebrity do mundane things (like riding a horse) makes it automatically entertaining because a celebrity is doing it. Maybe if the woman had been a dog lover then the premise might have had more legs (so to speak), what with dogs being natural entertainers (unlike cats), but cats are just not funny. Unless they’re in microwaves.

Anyhow, the episode was predictable stuff: Dreyfus gets initial success with his pussy-esque nature until he goes too far with the dose of cat serum and ends up living in the house of an old spinster. Actually, I made the last bit up, but when you do chase after women who like cats then that’s the type of woman you end up with (real straight men know this to be the case).

But what does all this have to do with Punt & Dennis? Well, just as I thought the lame cat concept couldn’t get worse, for some inexplicable reason Hugh Dennis made an appearance in the episode dressed up in drag, because when a man dresses up in drag its automatically funnee. Unless Hugh Dennis does it, at which point no man again can ever do a drag act again and be funny as it’ll only give me flashbacks of Hugh Dennis dressed up in tights and makeup. *Shudders*

So, essentially, the entire episode had a floridly camp gay man playing a straight character pretending to be a cat to get a woman and is treated for his pussy-addiction by a man dressed in drag. Only Dreyfus and Dennis could take this material and render it so bland and unfunnee. The Beeb really does need to put My Hero out of its misery, because right now the only thing they’re succeeding in doing with this show is putting its Friday night audience to sleep.