The delay to Brexit plus strict pre-election guidelines left few chances for trenchant jokes in David Walliams and Matt Lucas’s sketch show

In the many risk assessments of the possible consequences of Brexit happening on Halloween – lorry queues, drug shortages, street violence – scant attention was paid to a significant victim of its not happening: broadcasting specials timed to coincide with departure from the EU being forced to go out, even though the UK actually hadn’t.

The special Brexit edition of Little Britain, bringing David Walliams and Matt Lucas’s sketch show back to Radio 4, where it started in 2000, was at a double disadvantage. Having been denied its calendar reason for being, it also now found itself broadcast in the run-up to a general election, when the BBC’s already contorted attempts at political impartiality become even stricter.