The first tutorial takes place over vodka one evening, Igor’s tuneless baritone giving occasional clues to what the original melody might have been. Interestingly he fails to tell Palin (and thus Palin fails to tell the world) that this song is actually a eulogy to the Red Army. Anyway, Palin then hums this tune constantly as he visits various situations in Pacific Russia, culminating in a performance in Vladivostok by singing sailors of the Rossky Flot, in which Palin does a comedy act, himself dressed as a sailor. The punchline is that he is caught out by his over-enthusiasm, failing to stop when the rest of the ensemble does.

It’s all rather twee and obvious, and not the best use of Palin’s considerable talent for encountering people and – as a hapless Englishman – enlisting their aid.If Palin is hapless, Jonathan Miller, his comedic forerunner, is as hapful as anyone on the planet. With the universe – and now the earth – spoken for, Miller colonises the arts in Jonathan Miller’s Opera Works (BBC2, Mon). And my God, is he good at it! In his mature years he has lost that breathlessness, and replaced it with an easy, gentle wit and a humane insight that encompass all the students, divas, directors and camera operators he works with, bringing out the best in them.This series is shot in what looks like the ballroom of a crumbling wing of the Palace of Versailles. Ancient architraving is falling off the doors, the ornate cornices are missing in patches from the ceiling, Miller and the cast recline on huge, wrecked sofas from which the stuffing protrudes in white puffs.

On the floor they have laid a huge white dust-sheet, and another is suspended from the highest part of the ceiling. A perfect piano sits in one corner.In this ruined, magical place (actually the top floor of Whiteley’s shopping complex in west London), Miller takes his singers through scenes from operas, last week showing them how they might stage the ensembles from The Marriage of Figaro and Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.I quite like opera, but I really love this. For a start, there is the Kids from Fame element, in which you see raw talent transformed by production. A couple of guys and gals singing a nice song, becomes a scene – a movement – full of laughter and understanding, as a consequence of an instruction, and two suggestions.But it is Miller himself who captivates. His use of language and humour to illustrate what he wants an actor to do is an enormous treat in itself, seen in his thought that Figaro should respond to accusations from the Count as though he were a quietly insolent squaddie: “Wanna make something of it … sir?” I have decided that Miller’s power resides in his wonderful nose. Samson’s hair gave the dim Israelite enormous strength, and Miller’s splendid proboscis – at once sensitive and directive – does the same job for him.

It comes at you over the screen, amused eyes and kindly smile dancing attendance, and bringing with it the best conversation in town. If I had had a hooter like that, I too might have been a genius. Watch him, if you get a chance.And let us end with Peter Snow’s Tomorrow’s World (BBC1, Wed). Actually it isn’t called that, the cult of the celebrity not having touched the modest 10-footer. The show itself was much the same programme that we know, love and occasionally watch, but Snowie exhibited all the signs of the former international footballer transferred prematurely from the club he loved, and determined to show everyone that there are still tricks in those toes. To that end he had cast off the musty weeds of news journalism and put on his gladrags, with a brilliant canary shirt, beige slacks and no tie.And perhaps, now, we should do the same..