was it when the bloke in the shop said 'we're going to have fun tonight buddy' and winked - worse moment surely?

To me the most cringe-inducing moment in the original 70s version is Columbo mistaking an air vent for a piece of art in "Playback". Since Columbo isn't interviewing a murder suspect at the time, that's making him look dumb for a cheap laugh.

Mine is still Columbo letting Cathy know that Ken was willing to go away if Tony paid him (that sounds like a line from the narrator of a soap opera, doesn't it?). Maybe that's information that Cathy needed to have, but to me it still feels like he was butting in. That's nearly my only bad moment from GREENHOUSE JUNGLE.

There's "Oh...the big fish" in Too Many Notes and that tuba scene in Sex and the Married Detective. Those are awful. And the whole time release explanation at the diner in Uneasy Lies the Crown.

In as far as the original NBC run goes, both the infamous scene in "Make Me A Perfect Murder" where Columbo plays with the television graphics, and the scene in "Dagger Of The Mind" where Columbo jumps out of the car to take pictures of the marching band, weaving in and out of the crowd.
To me, these two scenes are the only ones that I can think of that seem to have no other purpose than to fill time, and to me, at least, even the humor intended for those two scenes falls completely flat.

Too Many Notes to me was one cringe-worthy fiasco, chiefly because of the writer's ignorance of how Columbo operates and controls his emotional reactions. Yikes. The tuba thing was awful, as well, along with the beer/ginger ale speech from Strange Bedfellows.

To me, the most cringe-worthy moments -- perhaps OK in their day, but which have aged VERY badly -- are Columbo's moments with young girls, where he tells them how beautiful they are, etc -- I "get" that Columbo was just being Columbo, but as I said, these bits of dialogue just do not hold up well over time!

Without taking time to check (and I\'m sorry if I get these wrong), I believe such moments occur in "Etude In Black" and in "The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case."

This might be small potatoes to most of you, but one of mine is Karl Lessing's line to Viveca Scott, "I'm your hairy little teddy bear."

"Teddy bear" is one thing, and "fuzzy teddy bear" would be one thing, but "hairy teddy bear" is just a little too strange for me. Or is that just some "semantics" kind of problem that I have with it?

Yeah -- perfectly innocent back then, but verrrry creepy today, especially in Etude.

I agree. I could see how Columbo is acting like an uncle in Sky High but the writers did not really bring that out. The moments in Etude does not hold up. I think the girl in "Etude" seemed a bit young to asking Columbo the 'mind/body' question. Columbo lets that go as he does the remark she made about the name he was thinking about for a dog. (Just saw episode a week or so again.) Its one thing to be mocked by adults but another for him to take that nonsense from a kid.

Just my opinion.

"I like your hair. Darryl"?

Columbo just responds...."uhhhh, yes"

It isn't a CRINGE moment by a long shot, but I feel like rolling my eyes when the belly dancing instructor in TRY AND CATCH ME says "Remember to keep it dignified - this isn't a strip tease."
All joking aside, what's so undignified about a strip tease?