They begin by locking him in a room filled with safes, which contain cigarettes, food, drink and a number of booby traps which make opening them a hazardous business.

He moves into a house with Babette, gets a job working as Father Christmas in a department store and refuses an offer by one of his old pals to go back into criminality.

He wanted Alistair Sim, Terry-Thomas and Kenneth More to play the leads but they were too expensive so instead he used Wilfrid Hyde White, Stanley Baxter and Leslie Phillips.

[5] Annakin later wrote "Despite all my directorial efforts, Crooks Anonymous remained a typical low-budget picture, making a small profit to the very insular producer and British distributors.

Once again, I learned you may write the best script in the world, but if it is a comedy depending on certain type of offbeat characters, unless you cast them with the A-team, it is all a complete waste of time and effort.

The broad fun relies quite a lot on the experienced innuendo and know-how that such players as Leslie Phillips, Wilfrid Hyde White, James Robertson Justice and Michael Medwin can bring to it.

For all that, though, it would hardly be more than a "Carry On Crooks" were it not for the superbly Goonish mimicry of Stanley Baxter, who works for Dandy's salvation in a variety of splendidly absurd disguises.

It's an amusing but limited idea: what else would the members of a villains' self-help group do but put their individual expertise to collective misuse?

Stanley Baxter and Leslie Phillips run through their usual tricks, while Wilfrid Hyde White, James Robertson-Justice and Robertson Hare steal scenes at will.