topical animated series is dark and unafraid to tackle taboo subjects such as paedophilia, taking us to Cruel Britannia, a creepy place where the public are hoodwinked by arrogant politicians and celebrities. This edgy show doesn't always work, but when it does there is nothing quite like it". More recently a Guardian critic called it "a wonderful programme... perhaps the best thing in Thompson's formidable CV". Thompson's last broadcast work was the Channel 5 sitcom Respectable, on which he finished work the week before he died. Co-written with Shaun Pye, the programme was set in a suburban brothel and aired in 2006. The Guardian criticised the programme's "woefully old-fashioned, juvenile outlook" and called it "drearily unsophisticated". The programme was also criticised in some quarters on the grounds that it made light of prostitution. Other work Harry Thompson also produced non-comedy documentaries for BBC Radio. He made several programmes with writer/presenter Terence Pettigrew, starting with anniversary tributes to Hollywood icons James Dean (You're Tearing Me Apart) and Montgomery Clift (I Had The Misery Thursday). Pettigrew and Thompson subsequently worked together on a second series of documentaries, including on national service (Caught in the Draft), and also about the evacuation of children from major British cities during the Second World War (Nobody Cried When The Trains Pulled Out). Both programmes were presented by Michael Aspel. As well as writing for television, Thompson wrote biographies of Hergé (1991), Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams (1994) (of which The Independent said, "The problem is that Thompson simply worships Ingrams, and his biography melts steadily into hagiography... [an] overlong panegyric") and Peter Cook (1997). His novel This Thing of Darkness, a historical fiction about Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the Beagle, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005. Thompson described Fitzroy, rather than Darwin, as the book's hero: His final book, the semi-autobiographical Penguins Stopped Play, was finished in 2005; it dealt with his amateur cricket team, the Captain Scott XI, and was published posthumously in 2006. Personal life Thompson was married to Fiona Duff. They had two children, Betty and Bill. The breakdown of their marriage became public in 1997 when Duff wrote an article about Thompson's affair with a 25-year-old woman (later revealed to be Victoria Coren) in the Daily Mail. In 2003, Thompson began a relationship with Lisa Whadcock; they met after she wrote a fan letter to him