It's A Fair Cop - 1961 - Eric Sykes

By this time, he was already very well known and had starred in his own TV series ("Sykes and a..." had started the previous year, with Hattie Jacques playing Sykes's sister), and he had written numerous other comedy shows for radio since the end of the Second World War, including material for Frankie Howerd, who in 1947 performed the first sketch of Sykes's ever accepted by the BBC (the 'Two Elephants' sketch).

However, Sykes didn't write It's A Fair Cop himself. John Junkin and Terry Nation (later to create the Daleks) wrote the scripts.

Set in Blossom Hill Police Station, Sykes plays a constable answerable to his superior, Sgt Deryck Guyler, who in turn is answerable to Superintendent Leonard Williams (who would become better known as another cop the following year, on television, playing Sergeant Twentyman in the first series of Z Cars, before his early death).

This series has many similarities to the long-running TV series that began a year earlier, as not only does Deryck Guyler play a policeman, but Hattie Jacques plays Sykes's sister. Making up the full compliment is resident prisoner Dick Emery, a jobbing criminal who learns to make himself comfortable in his many stays in Cell Number 1.

The same cast would also play multiple other characters as required: Leonard Williams is the postman Tom