Everyone a winner in Keith's home match; TV REVIEW.

It is a pity all of us couldn't get to know our fathers as well as actor Keith Allen did in Travels With My Dad (C4).

The pair took a stroll down memory lane and spoke openly about their feelings for the first time.

It was something they never did when the hellraiser Comic Strip star was growing up and his father Eddie was away for months with the Royal Navy.

Even in those days Keith was a tearaway, and when his dad spoke to him it went in one ear and out the other. The disapproving looks he got as a kid were still etched in his brain.

Father was a disciplinarian, happy with service life. Son was hell-bent on rebellion and saw rules as there to be broken.

Punishment for soccer-mad Keith included not being able to watch the 1966 World Cup Final - it was nearly 30 years, he revealed, before he finally saw it. "England won," said his dad. It was the only time he made a joke.

You could still feel the tension between them 25 years later when they embarked on their voyage of discovery. "It is pretty frightening being with my dad for five days," said the actor, who played the baddie in Martin Chuzzlewit.

The first port of call was Portsmouth, where Eddie proudly showed off the workings of a submarine and admitted that when he served on one the job came before his family.

Then Keith took his dad on a tour of the important places in his life. The posh school he was kicked out of. The first house he broke into on his way to becoming "the worst thief on the planet". The detention centre, where he obligingly smashed the hand of a cellmate who wanted a bed in the sick-wing.

It was clearly not the sort of thing his father had in mind: "I had visions of going to university and seeing him graduate in a cap and gown".

It was fascinating seeing them opening up old wounds and attempting to close them at the same time. If only all of us had a chance to bridge the generation gap in the same way.

The tragedy is that when maturity allows the lines of communication to open it is often too late.

Keith's eyes nearly popped out when Eddie let out the shameful secret that he, too, ended up in trouble with the police as a lad for stealing a gold knife. "I don't believe this!" screamed his son, sounding like a latter-day Victor Meldrew. It seemed to bring them closer.

"I feel so much warmer to my dad. He is a great bloke," said Keith. Then tears started welling and he waved away the cameras. When you have a reputation for outrageous behaviour it is not trendy to be caught crying.

CASUALTY (BBC1) should have done more to stop drivers drinking over Christmas than any advertising campaign. A six-year-old girl and her mum religiously stuck to the Green Cross Code but they did not bargain for the drunk who mounted the pavement and mowed them down.

The mother escaped with head and leg injuries, but the girl, who had just been in the school nativity play, was killed. Her heartbroken vicar uncle found his faith tested and ended up taking a swing at the driver.

No fear of an outbreak of comfort and joy at Holby Hospital. Someone even nicked the decorations on the Christmas tree.