Alexander Armstrong

My week: Alexander Armstrong

Alexander Armstrong talks about a typical week for him.

While some panel shows are having trouble finding their footing, Would I Lie To You? just seems to keep going from strength to strength.

Rob Brydon, David Mitchell and Lee Mack seem to make a perfect team. There's so many angles for them to play with: Mitchell's poshness verses Mack's working class background; Mitchell's southerness and Mack's northerness; Mitchell and Mack's Englishness verses Brydon's Welshness, and so on.

There is one significant change to this new series, however, that being the show is now on before the watershed. This, for me, is a worry. You may remember that this happened to QI when it moved to BBC One, which ended up as a failure and resulted in QI moving back...

However, it would seem that it's survived this changed. The show seems to be just as funny as ever, especially the bit when Mack trying to claim that his ex-girlfriend's names spell out the world "Bermuda". The guests, Alexander Armstrong, Mel Giedroyc, Alex Jones and Chris Tarrant, provided much amusement too.

Now in its 43rd series, amazingly, little has changed since Have I Got News For You was forced to ditch scandal-hit Angus Deayton as host for the successful but problematic "guest host" format. The thinking is that HIGNFY is kept fresh by having different celebs hosting the show every week, Saturday Night Live-style, and that's true to an extent-but it also means you have boring "safe pair of hands" episodes (here Stephen Mangan, usually Alexander Armstrong) more than the truly memorable hosts (like Boris Johnson or Bruce Forsyth). It also irritates me that the show still keeps in the "mistakes" a guest hosts make during the live recording, as if it's still a novelty having a "non-professional" sitting in the hot-seat and a fluffing a line or two. Isn't this the accepted format of the show now? Why are the still showing us what amounts to bloopers in the show itself?

HIGNFY is still incredibly popular and remains an entertaining watch, but I find myself wishing it would be overhauled. Ian Hislop and Paul Merton have been team captains for so long their shtick is fairly predictable, especially in the latter's case with his surreal meanderings. But more worrying than that, if we're honest HIGNFY is a much less perceptive satirical show than its reputation has us believe. If you note the type of jokes that are made off-the-cuff, or the writers have scripted for the guest host to read off the autocue, the majority of them are silly jibes about a particular famous person's public persona or physical looks. (Politician Eric Pickles is a particular target these days, just because he's fat. I guess Pickles is John Prescott's replacement because they've had the ex-Deputy PM on the show and now we know he's actually a straight-thinking and amusing man.)

Obviously not every joke can be a vividly perceptive gem that tackles the hot issues of the day in a fresh way, but I get the feeling that HIGNFY has less and less to say of real merit these days. It's like everyone who appears on it just follows the pattern they've seen play out hundreds of times, afraid or just unable to take the show down a different path. Why not alter some of the rounds, ditch some of the weaker ones, or bring in a few new ideas? For instance, why is there still a "guest publication" in the Missing Words round? Wasn't that a one-series joke that never got retired? Its weekly inclusion just removes the opportunity for a politically-based joke when the missing word has something to do with a niche topic like raisins instead of something topical and of public interest.

It just feels like HIGNFY could do with a facelift, because it's been around for so long that viewers find it comforting (some people have never known a world without HIGNFY, remember!), and treat it with a reverence it perhaps doesn't deserve anymore. It probably helps that there's no admirable challenger out there, with Channel 4's disappointing 10 O'Clock Live and Adrian Chiles' That Sunday Night Show its closest competitors. In comparison to both, HIGNFY remains genius.

At the heart of BBC One's returning Friday night comedy block is the 43rd series of Have I Got News for You. Over the last 22 years the current affairs panel show has clocked up some improbable statistics: no fewer than 363 episodes transmitted, with Alexander Armstrong its most frequent guest host after 19 appearances in the chair. Tonight's show will be hosted by Stephen Mangan, alongside veteran team captains Ian Hislop (who has appeared in all 363 editions) and Paul Merton (a relative novice at just 355). Later in the series, we are promised debuts from new hosts such as former government spin doctor Alastair Campbell, as well as returns from motormouth Jeremy Clarkson and Homeland's Damian Lewis.

Alexander Armstrong was forced to turn down Countdown

When former BBC chief Jay Hunt found out he was about to jump ship to the popular game show he claimed she forced him to turn it down.

My week: Alexander Armstrong

I am a fast walker. In fact I am scarcely capable of mere walking: I peg it, and with an ungainly kind of wiggle in my stride.

Is Alexander Armstrong the poshest man in comedy?

More so than Miranda Hart, Stephen Fry and David Mitchell, Alexander Armstrong seems to be the acceptable face of posh comedy.

This new studio-based sitcom pilot from Channel 4 starring Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller is best described as a decent effort, but probably not worth returning to.

While the fact that it has a live audience would be enough to make most reviewers vomit in disgust, for me the main problem with this Edwardian sitcom is that it pales into insignificance following the BBC's showing of The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff last week.

Like the latter, Felix & Murdo uses silliness and satire as a focal point for its humour - my favourite moment was the cash machine operated by a young boy inside it - but it just wasn't as good as The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff. Of course, The Bleak Old Shop... has had a lot of practice - what with it first starting off on radio - and if it's given a full series it may improve, but I doubt it.

On the plus side, it was good to see Marek Larwood playing a straighter role than normal. It would be nice to see him continue in straighter acting as well as his more humorous and bonkers roles.

Tough and tender side of Alexander Armstrong

The record-breaking guest host of Have I Got News For You isn't afraid to turn his back on left-wing alternative comedy or to give in to emotion.

"This is the story of a British tabloid newspaper," says the on-screen message at the start of Hacks. "Obviously everything in it is made up." Then, for the next hour, Guy Jenkin's satirical look at you know which story chronicles recent events remarkably accurately. Not the boring bits - the most outrageous, and the most fun. It is fun. And very, very silly.

Claire Foy is properly good as the pushy moral vacuum of an editor. Kayvan Novak - Fonejacker turned phone hacker - is hilarious as an investigative reporter who specialises in the art of disguise and whose resemblance to a real investigative reporter who specialises in the art of disguise is obviously purely coincidental. Likewise Alexander Armstrong as "David Bullingdon", the posh twat who somehow gets to run the country. (From now on we must all refer to the PM as David Bullingdon, OK? And that includes you, Mr Miliband.)

But Guy Jenkin's master stroke is to give Wendy De ... sorry, "Ho Chi Mao Feast", the position at the heart of the story she clearly merits. Her brutal attack on the protester at the hearing - during which she repeatedly and ferociously bashes his head with her high heel until the blood spatters the select committee - is a joy.