Kenneth Williams' brand of camp comedy, while very funny in smallish doses, can pall when he has a lengthy chore as here. But Bernard Cribbins brings some useful virility to his fatuous role.

More sprightly and less encumbered with the need to titillate that would ring-fence the Carry Ons in later life, there is a youthfulness about Spying that still remains fresher than the colour films.

Straight off the Carry On assembly line, this spoof on James Bondery looses a few random and very limp satirical shafts, but is for the most part content to stick to routine.

Mercilessly ribbing the James Bond movies and Graham Greene's espionage entertainments, the ninth Carry On saw Barbara Windsor make her series debut as the most resourceful of a hamstrung quartet of agents sent to Vienna to recover a secret formula.