FRENCH wartime sitcom Allo Allo is set to return to the BBC for a one-off special filmed in Manchester.

A new episode will be recorded at Granada Studios on March 22 in front of a live audience and will reunite the original cast.

It will be screened later in the spring and see a return for Gorden Kaye, the former Octagon actor who played Rene Artois in the comedy which ran from 1982 to 1992 on BBC1.

But the reunion will be will be without Carmen Silvera, who died in 2002 and who played Rene's on-screen wife, Edith, and Richard Marner, who played Colonel Von Strohm, who died in 2004.

The series made light of the Nazi occupation of France and became famous for the Germans' pursuit of an elusive painting called The Fallen Madonna With The Big Boobies.

Written by David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd, it gave rise to catchphrases such as "listen very carefully, I shall say this only once" from a sultry Resistance fighter.