Andy Hamilton (I)

Channel 4's commitment to cutting edge comedy continued with this satirical take on the campaign leading up to May's general election. Writers Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton employed the same technique they did during Drop the Dead Donkey and wrote some of the more topical jokes on the day that the episodes were filmed. This gave Ballot Monkeys a very relevant edge and what's more it was very funny to boot with special mention going to Ben Miller's frustrated Lib Dem supporter and Sarah Hadland's awful UKip member. Ultimately Ballot Monkeys wasn't just one of the funniest sitcoms of the year it was also one of the most inventive.

Review - Andy Hamilton: Change Management

His observational humour is amazing and he appears to be continuing to observe even during his performance.

This week's new live comedy

Previews of Spencer Jones, Kevin Eldon and Andy Hamilton.

Andy Hamilton review

If a show's references run from playing in postwar bomb sites, to the Tomorrow's World theme tune, to Google's self-drive cars, you know it's taking its title of Change Management seriously. Indeed, as Andy Hamilton surveys how life has changed since he was born in the 1950s, he shows quite some range.

Andy Hamilton: Change Management - Salford, review

There's plenty of laughs in Change Management, it's two hours of reliable, cosy comedy. Hamilton is a likeable, entertaining comedian, but, as with the TV panel shows that Hamilton frequents, it's all pretty throwaway, and there's little here that will be memorable by next week.

Seven questions with... Andy Hamilton

Andy Hamilton is an award winning comedy writer and stand up comedian, perhaps best known for co-creating and writing Outnumbered, who has recently been working on satirical television shows such as Ballot Monkeys and the comedy film What We Did On Our Holiday with fellow writer Guy Jenkin. Now he is back on the road with a new stand up show: Change Management.

Sandi Toksvig bid The News Quiz (Radio 4, Friday) farewell this week. She had been with the show for nine years, 28 seasons and 222 episodes, which is a good innings by anyone's account. Dressed in tuxedos, her panel - Jeremy Hardy, Francis Wheen, Andy Hamilton, Phill Jupitus - looked like something from the early days of BBC Radio, and put in a relatively subdued performance. Like them, I'll miss her laugh, her ability to poke fun at herself, her infectious good nature. But I'm also intrigued to see whether Miles Jupp, named as her successor in this week's announcement, can breathe new life into a series that has become rather cosy and unsurprising of late.

With three days to go before polling day, we can presumably expect events in the election battle bus sitcom to grow ever more frenetic. But in a controlled way, because Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin perfected the knack of dropping topical material into the mix at the last moment back in their days writing Drop The Dead Donkey; while the likes of Hugh Dennis, Ben Miller and Sarah Hadland can be relied on not to fluff their lines. Continues and concludes tomorrow and Wednesday.

Ballot Monkeys was sharp, as would befit a writing credit for Andy Hamilton, and thus trumped and trumps ITV's Newzoids so far. Again served by a great ensemble, it was hampered only by being so close not only to topicality but to truth. Stronger, Fairer, Nicer is the slogan on the Lib-Dem battle bus and a blistering Ben Miller couldn't better negate any of those adjectives. The Tory bus has Hugh Dennis as the head of something involving "delivery", although you were invited to set your watches back to 1954 as a bereft "women's spokesman" had to crane her neck against the bus-rack just to be heard past his dullard alpha shoulders. Labour? Just constantly worried about the reaction on the doorstep to happy warrior Miliband. Andy Nyman's Ukip press officer is not so much fighting Twitter storms - most of them engendered by the bus's other occupants - as engaged in a Sisyphean bout of Whack-a-Mole. If only politics could be this much fun. If only Labour hadn't sold everyone down the river. Adapted to the paradigm contiguities of a modern vibrant age. Sold everyone down the river.