A series more or less purpose-built for the Christmas special, Ghosts (BBC One) has warmth, silliness and no fewer than nine spooks, where Charles Dickens only had four. Last year’s episode The Ghost of Christmas focused on the chequered past of disgraced Tory MP Julian (Simon Farnaby), and last night’s, He Came!, delved 150 or so years further back, revealing the torrid tale of how Button House came into Fanny’s (Martha Howe-Douglas) family. It was a story of hard times and thwarted dreams that found contemporary form in the shape of the homeless man camping on the grounds of Button House. 

The uninvited guest (Justin Edwards, the safest of tragicomic hands whether playing The Thick of It’s “Blinky” Ben Swain or dipsomaniac stand-up Jeremy Lion) went by the name of Nicholas, wore a red coat and woolly hat, had a white beard and a dog called Rudy. For Christmas-obsessed Kitty (Lolly Adefope) this could only mean one thing, while the Captain’s (Ben Willbond) rigid opposition to sucha “layabout” crumbled upon realising he was an ex-serviceman.

Starved of practical paranormal advice, Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) agonised about how generous they could truly afford to be, until circumstances contrived to fill Button House with Christmas guests after the oven at the local shelter broke down.

Fanny, meanwhile, showed an unexpected generosity of spirit towards the newcomer: flashbacks showed how close she had come to destitution. After her feckless father had gambled away the family’s fortune, she was persuaded by her mother Lavinia (Jennifer Saunders, walking a familiar tightrope of manic affection and wheedling self-interest) to sacrifice her hopes of a life in mathematics for marriage to George Button, a wayward distant cousin with a big house and a pile of money.