Strictly Come Dancing winner Louis Smith, comic Ronnie Corbett and supermodel Elle Macpherson are among the guests who will take part in Graham Norton's bid to set a new TV chat show record.

i Newspaper
 
TheIPaper
The Independent around the web
E-break Time
Independent Crossword

TELEVISION / I have seen the past, and it winks and mugs

NOT BEING particularly fond of the sort of sweety you find in tartan tins adorned with slogans like 'It's braw tasty, ye ken]', I found The Tales of Para Handy (BBC 1) something of a burden on the spirit. But I had a bad conscience while watching it. How could one decently object, after all? No violence, no bad language, folksy comedy and some lovely set-dressing (one scene, in particular, looked as if it had been shot at an unusually prosperous transport museum); if my critical faculties were prepared to lie back and surrender to Love on a Branch Line, what grounds for an affronted resistance here?

Look Who's talking: So who am I? Nobody knows: The comedian Jack Docherty describes the perils of not making a name for yourself

I'M A BIG fan of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, I think they've done some of the most interesting stuff in comedy in the last few years. But I hate praising them in print, so I'll add that they are a couple of complete bastards in real life. I was script editor on their first series, which basically involved telling them not to get drunk and to face the cameras.

TELEVISION / Cruelty free television - a chemical solution

'THEY say laughter is the best medicine,' Frank Skinner said to the Gagtag (BBC 1) audience, 'but no, you had to choose Valium.' This made me laugh, like a number of the things he said in the programme, but the thought isn't a bad one, really. Watching new comedy programmes these days can be an agitating, stressful experience. If the BBC can offer its staff trauma-counselling after working on programmes with distressing content, then perhaps they might issue the odd tranquilliser along with their press releases. Last Saturday, Danny Baker was at pains to point out that no cruelty had been visited upon the contestants in Pets Win Prizes (BBC 1, yes, honest . . . No, it wasn't Carlton . . . I'm not making it up. Look, check the bloody Radio Times if you don't believe me). It is surely time that this tender principle was extended to audiences, even if it takes pharmaceuticals to do it.

ARTS / Show People: Nothing to declare but his geniality: Frank Skinner

FRANK SKINNER BA Hons, MA, WBA fan, Warwickshire CCC member, Sun reader and comedian, makes the short walk from Soho to his rented office in Mayfair, where he will spend all day writing material for a 57-date national tour. No one bats an eyelid as he passes, pink-faced after a day in the sun at Lord's. In T-shirt, trainers and backpack (containing the stand-up's standbys: script, cigarettes and a change of underwear), he could be any old out-of-towner.

Review: Is Terry Wogan doing the right thing?

THE MEN from the BBC are in the process of redecorating the weekend - putting up new paper here, freshening the paintwork there. Last week Terry Wogan took the wraps off a British version of Brazil's favourite television programme (isn't it meant to work the other way around?) and this week we were given first sight of Felicity Kendal's new comedy series, Honey for Tea, of Richard Griffiths in Pie in the Sky and of the DIY broadcasting of Video Nation. As a rival to the charms of Imogen Stubbs in Anna Lee (ITV) you might think that Richard Griffiths was lacking something physically (surrounding airspace, basically) but there is real mischief in the timing. Pie in the Sky nibbles into the first five minutes of the main ITV Sunday offering, thus increasing the chances that viewers will stick with the crowd-pleasing movie that Alan Yentob has decided to place against it.

Comment: Reality of the Fantasy fad

THERE must be some people in Britain who still do not know what Fantasy Football is. But their number grows smaller by the day.

When is a group not a group?: The seven comic talents behind Radio 4's 'On the Hour', 'Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World' and 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' are bringing their unique brand of deadpan humour to television. Theirs is the new face of British comedy, but don't even think about calling them a team . . .

HALF-PAST five on a Thursday afternoon and the phone rings, and it's Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci on the other end: the photographer's there with the cast of The Day Today, a new television programme scheduled for transmission on BBC2 next year, and they're all a bit upset because he wants to take a group picture. They don't see themselves as a group and they don't want to be labelled one - they just happen to be making a programme together and to have made a fair number of other programmes together - and anyway Doon's on holiday and it wouldn't be fair, so couldn't they just have one photo each? Twenty-five minutes of reasoning, cajoling and outright pleading later, and they're still not happy with the concept of being photographed together, still arguing, and Morris refuses point- blank to be shot with the others. So, just to get the record straight: Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Armando Iannucci, Patrick Marber, Chris Morris and David Schneider are not a team. They are individuals, with their own projects, their own ambitions, their own hopes and dreams and fears. So is Doon, who was on holiday. And now, perhaps we can get on with it?

THEATRE / All the makings of a class act: While still struggling to make it as a stand-up, Frank Skinner was handed a copy of Comedians. It inspired him to run an evening class for aspiring comics. Here Skinner recalls the experience, his memory jogged by the revival of Trevor Griffiths' play at the Lyric, Hammersmith

WATCHING Jude Kelly's new production of Trevor Griffiths' Comedians, in which the comedian Eddie Waters runs an evening class for aspiring stand-ups, I began to realise how Claudius must have felt when the players started to re-enact his killing of Old Hamlet.

COMEDY / Dishing the dirt: Stand-up Frank Skinner is filthy and on television. How does he get away with it? Tristan Davies reports

Four years ago Frank Skinner was teaching a class of mechanics, salesmen, pensioners and dropouts how to be funny, and frankly he had a bit of a cheek. If you detected, as I did, covering it for the Independent, a slight note of desperation in his voice as he passed on the tricks of the trade - 'If you get on to the stage quickly enough,' he told his gaping students, 'you can pick up some of the previous act's applause' - then you might have put it down to Skinner's lack of credentials. A teacher by day at a West Midlands adult education centre (and an unqualified one at that), he'd had some experience of stealing applause by moonlighting on the London comedy circuit, but little in the way of earning it. As he waved a stick at his trainee comedians, you had the distinct impression of the blind leading the blind.
Career Services

Day In a Page

Independent Travel Shop See all offers »
Lake Como and the Bernina Express
Seven nights half-board from £749pp Find out more
Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian coast
Seven nights half-board from only £859pp Find out more
Prague city break
Three nights from only £199pp Find out more
Budapest city break
Three nights from only £229pp Find out more
Paris by Eurostar
Three nights from £259pp Find out more
Babies behind bars: A Palestinian fertility doctor has become an unlikely hero by helping women conceive – even though their husbands are in jail

Babies behind bars

A Palestinian fertility doctor has become an unlikely hero by helping women conceive – even though their husbands are in jail
Sonic youth: The high-pitched sound alarm for under 25s

Sonic youth: The high-pitched sound alarm

Is Mosquito, the alarm only under-25s can hear, a blessing or a bane?
The art of living in small spaces: Architects are learning how to make less, more

The art of living in small spaces

Space in cities at a premium so architects are learning how to make less, more...
Special report: The story of Sir Mervyn King's reign at the Bank

The story of Sir Mervyn King's reign at the Bank

After four 'nice' years as Governor of Bank of England, things turned decisively nasty
Zombie nation: Our enduring fascination with a world full of death and destruction

Zombie nation: Our fascination with death and destruction

A new season of shows on Radio 4 is inspired by dark tales of future dystopias. Meanwhile, zombies are marauding in the multiplexes...
Martin Stephen: 'Ofsted says comprehensives are failing the most able but teaching bright children isn't rocket science'

'Teaching bright children isn't rocket science'

It doesn't take a selective system to nurture the best minds, says a former head of St Paul's boys' school.
The retail empires strike back: Can new technology lure us back to the high street?

Can technology lure us back to the high street?

The high street has been bruised and battered by online firms but in-store technology is helping to enliven the retail experience...
The 10 Best new smartphones

The 10 Best new smartphones

Photos, films, music, apps and browsing - the latest mobiles can do it all
Jenson Button: Downbeat driver cannot wait to put season behind him

Jenson Button: Downbeat driver cannot wait to put season behind him

McLaren man admits 'failed gamble' with car has left him pinning hopes on 2014 campaign
James Lawton: Firmer fist will be required to win Champions Trophy final battle with stouter foe

James Lawton

Firmer fist will be required to win Champions Trophy final battle with stouter foe
'To farm I have to rape the countryside. It’s got to be wrong': The true effect of the badger cull

The true effect of the badger cull

'To farm I have to rape the countryside. It’s got to be wrong'
Theatre review: Daniel Radcliffe gives an admirably honest performance in Michael Grandage's The Cripple of Inishmaan

First night: The Cripple of Inishmaan

Daniel Radcliffe gives an admirably honest performance in Michael Grandage's comedy
Girls Guides drop religious reference but pledge to self and the Queen

Guides drop religious reference but pledge to self and the Queen

After 103 years, organisation changes oath to welcome 'all girls, of all faiths, and none'
Steve Tongue: Joe Kinnear was one of the boys and a breath of fresh air... 21 years ago

Steve Tongue

Joe Kinnear was one of the boys and a breath of fresh air... 21 years ago
Chris Froome: Free from 'pain in neck' after Bradley Wiggins' exit

Chris Froome: Free from 'pain in neck' after Wiggins' exit

Sky's lead rider says he is in fantastic form for the Tour and happy pecking order debate is over