The week on television

Men are getting fatter faster than women, discovers Emma Cook, and they don't like it

You could almost have felt sorry for Neil and Christine Hamilton as they were ripped to shreds on Have I Got News For You last night. But not quite.

Does she have news for you! James Rampton meets Caroline Quentin, a comedian set to tread the Jason-Coltrane road to detective stardom

It was in the Sixties. The sun shone in the summertime, the snow fell at Christmas and forget-me-nots flowered on my birthday in the forget- me-not bed in our garden. One day this man phoned to ask whether I would do a pilot for a quiz show he had devised for BBC Radio.

Laugh? I merely sighed. But it serves me right for listening to Week Ending, Radio 4's only regular satire show. I can't believe it's not better.

It used to be the Establishment bible, chronicling the details of archbishops, peers and dons. But as the 149th edition of Who's Who is published next month, the great and the good have been joined by the naff.

It is not hard to see why the BBC was so keen to hire Geoffrey Perkins - virtually nobody else in television or radio can match his comedy pedigree and talent for making hit shows.

No conflict of interest, he says

DICKIE FANTASTIC

Jasper Rees propounds the novel theory that comedy is, in fact, the new opera

Is BBC comedy stale? No, says its new head, Geoffrey Perkins. Well, he would, wouldn't he? By James Rampton

Heroes of Comedy is an essay on the fickle nature of posthumous fame. While posterity has been kind to Tommy Cooper and Joyce Grenfell, it has danced on the grave of Arthur Haynes. Arthur who? I hear you ask, and indeed - though a reviewer of television courts unemployment to admit it - you hear me ask.

If it's Sunday it must be the Comedy Store. Mark Wareham tagged along with Merton, Mullarkey, Sweeney and company