Alison Graham

Jeremy Clarkson is in the host's chair once again, always a gleeful prospect for anyone who enjoys watching him being needled by Ian Hislop. Remember when Clarkson threw his pen at Hislop, who'd had the temerity to cast doubt on Clarkson's authorship of his newspaper columns?

Their exchanges should be even more spicy, considering Private Eye's pursuit of Clarkson after he imposed a super-injunction on his ex-wife (a legal stricture Clarkson himself broke late last year).

Surely everyone will have some sport with guest Nancy Dell'Olio, a woman who has turned preening self-obsession into a profession.

Ah, Des O'Connor. Indefatigable crooner, Morecambe and Wise foil, chat-show host and borderline national treasure. Who knew he's daft enough to eat cat food by accident? Or is he? Maybe his long, peculiar story about how he dined on this strange dish in a holiday villa is all nonsense.

O'Connor, looking as bronzed as a 70s sideboard, is a game contestant on Lee Mack's team, and quickly gets into the spirit of the show after a giggly start. Meanwhile, on David Mitchell's team, Rhod Gilbert regales us with an account of the acute trauma he suffered at an airport.

And comic actress Sally Phillips (Smack the Pony, Miranda) apparently plays a texting-game with her husband while he's at the swimming baths. Worse, she once rode her uncle's mobility scooter with disastrous consequences. Perhaps. It's a great show, and what Friday nights are for.

Prepare to be buried in a torrent of smut when Lee takes up Lucy's challenge to join a fun run. It sounds an unlikely source for a welter of mucky gags, but when Lee (Lee Mack) pulls a muscle during a half-hearted attempt at training, and when he hires a Polish masseuse to help, only he doesn't realise she's that kind of masseuse, we are pitched into Carry On type misunderstandings.

Before we know it, Lee and Tim have been arrested for kerb-crawling and end up in a brothel. Of course it doesn't matter that they are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing; it can't stop a flow of jokes that would make Roy Chubby Brown reach for a lace handkerchief.

There's a sad story from Richard Bacon: when he worked in McDonald's his girlfriend joined the queue for his till and dumped him when she reached the counter.

Of course, it could be complete tosh and the fun lies in the inquisition. As Bacon is on David Mitchell's team that means he's extensively quizzed by Lee Mack, backed by Clare Balding and a giggly Miranda Hart. And Balding is entertainingly cruel when Bacon reels off some facts about the cooking times of burgers.

Also, Dale Winton reveals how, as a child, instead of a comfort blanket or a teddy bear, he slept with a potato, while Hart insists she was a judge at the Identical Twins of the Year Award.

When John Le Mesurier's wife Joan left him for what turned out to be a brief and disastrous relationship with his best friend Tony Hancock, he became Joan's confidante. He'd comfort her in her unhappiest days with Hancock, telling her: "I love him too, I know exactly how it is, darling."

Everybody loved John Le Mesurier and the contributors here, including Joan, who left Hancock and returned to her husband (he never referred to her affair again) speak of him with unconditional adoration. Le Mesurier was peerless; that wonderful, urbane delivery and the crushed-velvet voice made him unforgettable as Sgt Wilson in Dad's Army.

To those who knew him best, he was charming, warm and delightful. Michael Palin worked with him on Jabberwocky and wonders fondly where Le Mesurier would be in 2012: "Playing a patient in a bed in Casualty?" Palin is a devotee of Le Mesurier's reassuring presence: "[when he appeared] I just felt comfortable. I knew he knew what to do."

The best lines tonight go to smashing Katy Wix as Daisy, Tim's remorselessly stupid girlfriend. Daisy is a woolly-hatted thumb-head, a dim pixie, a clot. She thinks camping is sexist because of its terminology: "One-man tent, guy rope" and eczema is a National Park.

Daisy is at her most wide-eyed when the Not Going Out quartet head to the woods for a night spent in tents under the stars. Disaster quickly looms when Tim's car breaks down and Lee (Lee Mack) decides to behave like a real man to impress his adored Lucy. But there's something nasty in the woods and no one feels brave. It's all very silly, but you will laugh, despite yourself.

Bobby Ball guests as Lee's wastrel dad, who arrives at the flat - almost top to toe in plaster - to throw himself upon his son's mercy. But Lee's mercy is strained, non-existent, even, particularly when dad needs a painkiller that cannot be taken orally and which has to be inserted, ahem, elsewhere.

You'll have gathered that this is comedy as broad as the M62. Luckily, Lee Mack just about gets away with a stream of gags about backsides; some are genuinely funny, some are just rank. If it's sophistication you're after, it's probably best to look elsewhere.

The route for the Olympic torch relay is in chaos because the deliverance team has pledged the impossible and the nonsensical, that the torch "will be within the reach of 95 per cent of the population". The solution? Alter the geography of Britain, at least theoretically, so now, announces infrastructure head Graham Hitchins, pointing to a map: "I've moved Nottingham a lot closer to Sheffield."

The clueless pinheads at PR company Perfect Curve, meanwhile, have dreamed up a rap song to accompany a planned Olympics sexual health campaign, which results in an excruciating meeting between resolutely non-hip deliverance boss Ian and a rapper. It's a great final episode, a zinger at the end of a too-brief series. Can we have an Olympic Games special in the summer, please?

Friday nights are Lee Mack night, with Would I Lie to You? and the return of this endearingly silly sitcom, an unashamedly old-fashioned half-hour of daft gags, smut, wisecracks and wordplay. Mack plays a version of himself, the world's worst flatmate, Lee: an ageing slacker who's in (undeclared) love with his comely landlady, Lucy (Sally Bretton).

Lucy's dull financial adviser brother Tim (Tim Vine) has joined a rock band, the Auditors, and his supporters are out in force. But his onstage banter is painful, leading Lee to observe: "Somewhere, in a parallel universe, Alice Cooper is advising someone about the advantages of a cash ISA."

We get a glimpse into the workings of unspeakable PR agency Perfect Curve when dead-eyed Siobhan (Jessica Hynes) gathers her team to brainstorm ideas. They come up with a terrific wheeze - combining the Queen's Diamond Jubilee with the Olympics. Result? The Jubilympics.

Back at the Olympic Deliverance Committee offices, Ian has an attentive male PA, and febrile head of sustainability Kay Hope (Amelia Bullmore) is quietly in meltdown. There's a wonderful scene between Kay and Ian (Hugh Bonneville) after Kay has a moment of madness with a vitally important document.