But his humour most certainly isn't dimmed, with some boisterously bawdy versions of the 14th-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym.
The Original Soundtrack, every bit as cinematic as the title suggests; Deceptive Bends, a brave attempt to rescue things after Kevin Godley and Lol Creme abruptly left; and Sheet Music, experimental, funny, beautiful in parts, bawdy in others, songs that satirise the world of 1974 with its oil shocks and aircraft hijackings and incipient obsession with wealth and high finance.
I've never really been a fan of Charlie Hebdo – its humour was often too bawdy for my taste and I agree with one of their former employees, Olivier Cyran, that in recent years it has often drifted into racist caricatures, reinforcing an already toxic environment for French Muslims.
The Bafta TV awards will recognise the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who on Sunday night – but the BBC1 programme is one of several big-rating shows that failed to win a nomination, along with Downton Abbey and the bawdy sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys.
Raavan and Eddy is set in one of those chawls and is a fine evocation of Mumbai's multicultural world, its slow-motion anarchies, its bawdy humour and its never-say-die spirit.
The Queen's annualThe broadcast had a combined audience of 7.8 million viewers on BBC1 and ITV, more than half the viewing nation at 3pm on Christmas Day, just beating BBC1's bawdy sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys to the top spot.
When Gustave Flaubert travelled to Egypt in the 19th century, he spent hazy days watching bawdy skits on the streets of Cairo about "whores and buggering donkeys", and fleshy nights enjoying the local prostitutes.Today East and West have shifted positions.
There's another coast that is altogether more domesticated and slipshod: bawdy in Donald McGill's postcards, seedy in Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock", gaudy in the Technicolor snaps of Martin Parr.In this photo essay in Intelligent Life magazine, Sheila Rock views the English seaside through American eyes, as "a forgotten England", writes Jasper Rees.
As events this week confirmed, the enterprise has been a clear lesson in the perils of gambling.In January the smart money was on Britain's first ever super-casino being given to Blackpool, a gaudy, bawdy Victorian seaside town in the north-west of England, which is in sore need of a dash of glamour.
"They should go after the dinosaurs who sit on chairs," suggested another, seconded by a tweep who advised that dinosaurs in gilt-trimmed cloaks, the garment of choice for senior sheikhs, would make a better target.Several contributors injected bawdy innuendo into their comments.
The bawdy comic libretto (she ordered her plastic surgeon to "Supersize me") gave way in the second half to a dark verismo.
