Editing It's That Man Again (section)

==Reputation==
''The Times'' commented that ''ITMA'' "achieved a humour of universal appeal and found eager listeners in every rank of society".{{sfn|"Tommy Handley". ''The Times''}} A 2002 history of Britain in the first half of the 20th century called the show "the most celebrated wartime radio programme&nbsp;... praised by intellectuals for its surrealism and wordplay, but loved by the mass listening public for its delirious silliness".{{sfn|Nicholas|2002|p=132}} The size of the audience was unprecedented; one historian records that more than sixteen million people listened to ''ITMA'' every week",{{sfn|Freedman|2015|p=67}} and another that "a staggering 40 per cent of the population" regularly tuned in.{{sfn|Took|1981|p=26}} But the show was not without its critics. Took quotes hostile letters to ''Radio Times'': "Why should the producers in the Variety department assume that the listeners are a body of half-wits? The puns served up last night in "ITMA" were an insult to anyone's intelligence" (1939) and "I am constantly amazed by the number of otherwise intelligent people who rave about this programme. I have tried to discover some sort of level of culture or intelligence from which ''ITMA'' fans are drawn—but in vain" (1944).{{sfn|Took|1981|p=26}} In 1947 a Scottish MP, [[Jean Mann]], referred to Handley—or his character—as a "twerp".{{efn|"The greatest insult of all to Scotland is the introduction of a Scots girl to 'Itma' who is supposed to be falling head over heels for a little 'twerp' called 'The Governor'".{{sfn|"Hansard 1947"}} Mann's comment was believed to be the first time the word "twerp" was uttered in the House of Commons:{{sfn|"B.B.C. Comedian Called a 'Twerp'". '' The Canberra Times''}}}}

In the show's early days critical response was not uniformly enthusiastic. The radio critic of ''[[The Manchester Guardian]]'' wrote in December 1939 that amusing as the show could be, "it is beginning to pall by its regularity and its attachment to the same style of humour".{{sfn|"Review of Broadcasting". ''The Manchester Guardian''}}{{efn|Another critic hoped in 1940 that ''ITMA'' and Funf could be "painlessly removed" from the BBC's schedules.{{sfn|Took|1981|p=26}}}} By the end of the last series, in 1949, writers in the same paper were comparing ''ITMA'' to the comedies of [[Aristophanes]]{{sfn|"The Man Who Was Thursday". ''The Manchester Guardian''}} and [[Ben Jonson]],{{sfn|"ITMA". ''The Manchester Guardian''}} as "a brilliant, penetrating commentary on our times&nbsp;... enlightening millions of people—a cunningly dispensed and cleverly administered medicine for the lesser ills of society".{{sfn|"ITMA". ''The Manchester Guardian''}} A contemporary critic observed that ''ITMA'' was entirely original and avoided stock characters:

{{blockindent|There are neither drawling Bayswater millionaires nor drooling Aberdonian wags nor, thank Hackney, any boy Cockney. These characters are novel. They gibber, splutter, stutter, stagger, suffer from amnesia, paranoia, claustrophobia, dyspepsia, dementia, and ''delirium tremens''. A whirling dream-world, the happy (and unhappily rare) one where no anxieties matter and where terror figures are laughed away by Daddy Handley's telephonic ridicule.{{sfn|"Radio". ''The Observer''}}|}}

Historians of the show acknowledge that the topicality that was one of ''ITMA'''s strengths has prevented it from wearing well.{{sfn|Foster|Furst|1999|p=28}}{{sfn|Took|1981|p=31}} Kavanagh himself admitted that reading his old scripts he could not work out what some of the jokes were about.{{sfn|Foster|Furst|1999|p=28}} Even while the show was still running, its producer, Worsley, said that recordings of earlier series "seem curiously dusty and faded, like an album of old photographs".{{sfn|Foster|Furst|1999|p=28}}

In a 2013 study of British comedy, John Fisher emphasises the influence of ''ITMA'' on later comedy shows by virtue of "its speed of delivery, its quick-fire succession of short scenes and verbal non-sequiturs, its surrealist overtones, all breaking away from the traditional music hall sketch orientation of ''Band Waggon'', and anticipating ''[[Take It From Here]]'', and even more so ''The Goon Show'' and ''[[Round the Horne]]''".{{sfn|Fisher|2013|p=167}}