A certain theme emerges from storylines featuring HR practitioners to suggest that writers have not had entirely positive experiences in the past. Finding yourself written into a scene where you are eaten by a multitude of giant spiders is never a good sign.

But here, for the record (and for the weekend), are HR's top five television moments and the HR practitioners who made them memorable.

Joanna Clore (The Green Wing)
Channel Four's hospital sitcom has a head of HR from hell. Addicted to cigarettes, double vodkas and coffee enemas, Joanna Clore (played by Pippa Heywood) is in a secret relationship with consultant radiologist Alan Statham, but openly despises him. Obsessed by age, she is anxious to conceal the presence of not one but two grown-up sons on the hospital's medical staff. Clore runs the HR department through a combination of neglect and casual cruelty. When she leaves her staff alone, they lose all semblance of civilisation and build a new social order closely modelled on Lord of the Flies. After accidentally committing a murder, Clore and Statham go on the run in a camper-van, inadvertently killing more people on the way. Tired, hungry, and with no better ideas they end it all, walking naked into the sea.

Philippa Moorcroft (Dinnerladies)
Middle-class southerner Philippa Moorcroft (Celia Imrie) relocates to fictional Manchester factory HWD Components, ostensibly to take up the job of HR manager, but in reality to be with her lover, senior manager Mr Michael. Moorcroft fails dismally to interest canteen staff led by Victoria Wood's "Bren" in bonding activities such as Scottish country dancing and flower arranging. Scatty and disorganised, she eventually decides to split up with "Mikey", carefully planning what she will say - only to be dumped before she can work through her carefully scripted agenda.

Mr Thorneycroft (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin)
After faking his own death, terminally alienated sales manager Reginald Perrin creates a new uneducated, buck-toothed ne'er-do-well persona for himself. In hiding from his old life, "Donald Potts" seeks work in the local council's parks department, where personnel manager Mr Thorneycroft (Roger Brierley) tells Reggie: "So many of our applicants these days have A-levels and degrees. Ex-salesmen and nuclear scientist dropouts. No use to us at all, you never know where you are with them. No, you're the sort of chap we're looking for: a lazy, criminal drunkard. You can start Monday morning."

Sam (In a Tight Spot: HR)
A bit of an obscure one, this - it was on BBC2 earlier this year. Peter is a middle aged manager left high and dry as the tide of casual sexism and heavy drinking ebbs away from office life. Sam (Nicholas Le Provost), his HR manager, is detailed to confront Peter about his unacceptable behaviour and to warn him. As the dialogue unfolds, it becomes clear that both men are equally at sea in the modern world of work, and equally in fear that their jobs will fall prey to rapacious management consultants.

Lance Bennett (Dr Who: The Runaway Bride)
In this Christmas 2006 episode starring Catherine Tate as Donna, the runaway bride of the title, Lance Bennett (Don Gilet) is Donna's fiancé and HR manager at London firm H C Clements. Bennett is in thrall to the Empress of Racnoss, a giant red spider, and has spiked Donna's daily coffee with deadly huon particles (bear with us on this one) for nefarious purposes. When Donna escapes, the Empress sends an army of robotic Santas to find her, and selects Bennett to take her place. Bennett comes to a sticky when the Empress decides he has been impolite to his fiancée and feeds him to her children.

For the intellectuals, we also have one nomination for Best HR Character in a French Art House Film: Jalil Lespert in Laurent Cantet's Human Resources as the HR intern pitted against his factory worker/trade unionist father in an oedipal/industrial struggle.

Does anyone have any other nominations?