If it was football it might be Fiction 1, Facts 0 – so what?

The Crown is still playing fast and loose with the truth – but it’s hilarious and just try taking your eyes off it, writes Aidan Smith

There’s something wrong with the voice. I mean, we all remember it as haughty and unforgiving and very likely to persuade even her most persistent critics in the Cabinet to give up the argument, bend over her desk and sigh: “Do your worst with the handbag, Margaret.”

But at the start of the fourth season of The Crown, Gillian Anderson as Mrs Thatcher sounds too gravelly, too weak and not like an Iron Lady at all. Things improve, though, when the Queen ( Olivia Colman) invites her up to Balmoral – this episode an instant classic of the great Netflix saga – and the PM'S lungs can fill with bracing Highland air.

This is the only positive from a disastrous excursion for the Prime Minister and what deliciously merry hell writer Peter Morgan makes of it. Maggie and Denis get the time wrong for dinner on the first night. She’s an awkward participant in Ibble Dibble. She turns up for stalking the next morning in a trueblue Tory suit that’s bound to scare off the deer. She sits in Queen Victoria’s favourite chair – strictly forbidden – and is properly bollocked by Princess Margaret. Did any of this actually happen? Frankly I don’t care if it’s Fiction 1, Facts 0 and VAR is investigating; it’s hilarious.

“What am I doing here?” Mrs T hisses to Denis during haggis- hurling at the Highland Games. “Half- Scottish, half- German Cuckoo- land,” he grumps. She says of the Royals: “No sophistication, no culture, no elegance.” “Boorish, snobbish and rude,” concurs Denis.

Then, fed- up with their silly parlour games and their bloodlust over an already wounded stag, she tears back to Westminster to sack some already wounded “wets”. I have some sympathy for

Thatcher on a deliciously disastrous visit to Balmoral, top, in The Crown, where things are going to get worse for Charles and Diana. Above left, Irvine Welsh, who finds moral outrage is everywhere around on a lonely Welsh hillside, their semi- sadistic outward bounds leader having long since abandoned them for the pub, just as the weather turns nasty.

They manage to find their way to Gwrych Castle near Rhyl and I’m wondering if the challenges will be entirely Welsh- themed, such as having to survive without vowels, eating only leeks and being forced to listen to the Stereophonics on repeat. That would be just too cruel when the contestants are being denied automatic Australian sunshine, so there’s the usual assortment of creepy- crawlies, plus Vernon Kaye.

At first glance the celebs seem pretty cut- price too, and adhere to the strict Strictly formula, meaning there has to be a blogger, someone "made" by another reality show and a Radio 1 DJ. But the jock, Jordan North, turns out to be the surprise hit of the first week – likeable, funny and self- deprecating, not at risk of being confused with Simon Bates and a man with a sizeable collection of phobias ( heights, confined spaces, snakes, changing his pants) who nevertheless seems to get along just fine with Shane Richie.

Some people will be offended by the consumption of sheep’s penises, deer testicles and cows’ teats on primetime telly. As

( Sky Arts) reveals, moral outrage is everywhere. We seem to love being offend