Mad About the Boy – watching Noel Coward at his wittiest best

Sue Wilkinson enjoys profile in Talking Pictures

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Which five people - dead or alive - would you invite to a dinner party? That has always been an entertaining conversation piece.

I'd ration myself to one person. The late Sir Noel Coward, play and screenwriter, director, actor, composer and wit.

As part of its Remembrance commemorations, the BBC showed a 30-minute Talking Pictures documentary followed by Coward's patriotic, epic movie masterpiece In Which We Serve.

Narrated by the late great Sylvia Syms, the documentary, a series of interviews with Coward, scratched the surface of what 'the Master', as he was known, achieved on stage, screen and away from his milieu.

His style, cultivated pose and poise was clear. He took interviewer Robert Robinson apart in a 1960 appearance on Picture Parade.

His answers to every question were pithy and witty. This was a typical exchange between the two - Coward, a shark circling a minnow.

Robinson: Do you get told a lot of bad jokes?