Theatre

COMEDY STORE PLAYERS THE GLOBE LONDON

Comedy Store Players The Globe London

THE THING that really separates the British from the Americans is our use of rhyming slang. As all Americans know, the streets of our great cities are full of Cockney people speaking to each other in rhyming slang, and maybe the lanes of our great villages as well, come to that. Just as the English suspect that when they go into a Welsh pub, everyone in there switches immediately from English to Welsh, so Americans have a vague suspicion that when they wander into a group of Britons, they will immediately start conversing in rhyming slang, not so much to avoid being understood by the Americans as to seem a bit more colourful and add a bit of zest to their humdrum tourist existence.

"WHO'S the other guest?"

I WAS a bit surprised at the weekend while watching the most recent edition of Have I Got News For You?, when Paul Merton roused himself from his usual sleepy-eyed attitude of watchful torpor and waxed indignant over something that Norman Tebbit had said in the Daily Mail.

Kate's dullard secretary is droning on about new ways of improving efficiency in the office. Kate, unable to take any more, butts in: "Let me stop you right there." "Yes?" says the secretary. "Nothing. Just let me stop you right there."

You heard it here first: pub quizzes are the new rock'n'roll. They've turned them into something of an artform at Upstairs at the East Dulwich Tavern, where hordes of eager potential Brains of Britain have been known to cram in to participate in a quiz chaired by Mark Lamarr or Paul Merton.

Coast to Coast (8pm BBC2) "England gets very weird when you start walking through it," reckons Janet Street-Porter as she strides along the first leg of a 500-mile march from Dungeness, in Kent, to the north Welsh coast. Spare a thought, one feels, for the innocent walkers ambling in the opposite direction. At an apparent hiatus in her TV career, Street-Porter, the Vice President of the Ramblers Association hoped to catch "a unique view of post-election Britain" (ah, those were the days). Instead, she encounters overgrown footpaths, salsa dancing in Rye, a plague of wild boars in East Sussex, and the first of several planted celebrities - in tonight's opener, Vic Reeves.

As politicians court satirists in the hope of being seen as one of the good guys, Peter Keighron questions the value of political satire

Politicians on the telly

A jury yesterday rejected claims for damages by former Tory MP Rupert Allason after he was called names in a Have I Got News For You diary. Paul McCann, Media Correspondent, hails a victory for those with a sense of humour.

A jury yesterday rejected claims for damages by former Tory MP Rupert Allason after he was called names in a Have I Got News For You diary.

Comedy