Arthur Mathews

Toast of London is the funniest thing on telly, while also being blithering nonsense of the highest order. This week the travails of struggling actor Steven Toast (Matt Berry) involved an acid trip and a very funny running joke about the Masons. There's a bit of Father Ted in Toast -- no surprise, since it was co-created by Arthur Mathews, but it's most reminiscent of the plays what Ernie Wise used to write on The Morecambe and Wise Show. With added orgies.

How to describe Steven Toast, the man/beast at the centre of the absurd but funny Toast of London? He is, in hair and moustache, a postmodern, and quite possibly post-mortem, version of Dickie Davies, who hosted ITV's World of Sport with such aplomb from 1965-85. Toast has Dickie Davies eyes and a Mallen streak in the middle of his bouffant. He has an Actor's voice, designed to reach the cheap seats and no longer capable of modifying its volume. He sounds, at all times, like a repertory version of Patrick Allen, the voice actor who brought an apocalyptic note to the public information film Protect and Survive, as well as scaring an entire generation into buying Barratt homes.

Matt Berry, who plays Toast, is just about old enough to remember Dickie hosting the grappling on a damp Saturday afternoon but he's also a voice-over artist in real life, toiling in the service of volcanic mineral water and financial services. Toast the character (created by Berry and Father Ted co-writer Arthur Mathews) is a distorted echo from those Soho casting calls, rendered from the dreamscape of an insecure thespian -- a place where almost everything that is said is unsayable in polite company. It is also the funniest thing going, with Berry's clowning rendered absurdly plausible thanks to the efforts of Tracy-Ann Oberman and Louise Jameson as the leonine Toast's gamey co-conspirators.

In the unlikely event that the Children in Need celebrity single flops, they could always try a celebrities and prostitutes blow-football tournament. It's not in good taste exactly, but voiceover artist and thesp Stephen Toast (Matt Berry) has never cared much about that. Britain's "second best actor acting in high winds" entered one such tournament in aid of homeless ponies last night, and thus began another brilliant series of Toast of London.

How is it that the first series - co-written by Berry and Father Ted's Arthur Mathews, no less - averaged only 300,000 viewers per episode? Exactly how loud does the bombastic and easily infuriated Toast have to shout to get some attention around here?

Like all the best comedy, this sitcom defies explanation, and maybe all humour is subjective anyway, but if you don't find Toast of London's idiosyncratic pronunciations, grotesque sex scenes and Clem Fandango mentions hilarious to the point of hernia, there's simply no hope.

Toast of London pops up with more than 400,000 viewers

The Bafta-nominated sitcom, co-written with Father Ted co-creator Arthur Mathews, had 426,000 viewers, a 3.4% share of the audience between 10.35pm and 11.05pm on Monday.

Radio Times review

Voiceover artist Steven Toast is back in the studio, being tormented by producer Clem Fandango and a familiar-sounding man. Is that really Mayor Boris Johnson who wants Toast to record the familiar Tube warning "Mind the gap"?

The perpetually fuming Toast (Matt Berry, co-writer with Father Ted's Arthur Mathews) returns for a second series, which mines the rich seam of bawdiness opened by the first.

Toast of London is spectacularly coarse (in the opening episode Toast signs up for a Prostitutes and Celebrities Blow-Football Tournament). But Berry is brilliant as Steven, a hopeless actor with a career so far on the skids he has to dress up as Charles Dickens for a themed London bus tour. It brings him into direct conflict with his nemesis, the repellent Ray Purchase.

Things are looking up for Matt Berry's thwarted thesp: he's got an audition for a role as Charles Dickens, he's having a not-so-secret affair with Ray Purchase's wife, and there's a further opportunity to humiliate Purchase in the annual "celebrities and prostitutes" blow-football match - if Toast can manage to find an escort in time. Add Boris Johnson and an inspired Clockwork Orange reference and you've got an agreeably daft opener of Berry and Arthur Mathews's chaotic sitcom.

Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews interview

A Boris Johnson lookalike, hobnobbing with artists and some saucy goings-on in a bed showroom - welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Toast Of London.

Toast of London series 2 teasers

Toast of London co-writer Arthur Mathews drops hints as to what to expect from the new series

Toast of London is co-written by Father Ted's Arthur Mathews and stars Matt Berry as the fruity-voiced actor Stephen Toast. We need only list a few character names to convince you of its genius: Clem Fandango, Kikini Bamalam, Yvonne Wryly, Hamilton Meathouse and Dinky Frinkbuster.

There is a contingent of comedy fans - the really knowledgable ones with the excellent taste - for whom a little-seen BBC3 show from 2006 called Snuff Box represents the peak of British television. Matt Berry, who co-starred in and co-wrote that absurdist dark comedy, set in a gentlemen's club for hangmen, also stars in and co-wrote Toast of London. So is it the second coming we've been waiting for?

Slightly less knowledgable comedy fans, with slightly less excellent taste, may remember Berry as Douglas Reynholm in The IT Crowd or Dixon Bainbridge in The Mighty Boosh, but in this he finally takes the lead, playing portly middle-aged actor Stephen Toast, a role that allows full use of his booming voice. In the opening episode it was all going well for Toast: his agent, Janet Plough (Doon Mackichan), told him he'd won an acting award from a gossip magazine after 28 years in the biz, and women seemed to find him irresistible. So what if one was on bail for attempted murder and the other throws shopping trollies in canals for fun?

Where Snuff Box blended sketch, songs and character into something brand new, this felt more familiar sitcom territory - Toast even shares a bachelor pad, Men Behaving Badly-style, with Ed (Robert Bathurst). Yet while the "sit" was traditional, the "com" definitely wasn't. When Toast's flatmate brings home a conquest, it's not Leslie Ash from next door, but the Nigerian Ambassador's daughter, who has been transformed into a Generation Game-era Bruce Forsyth by a vengeful plastic surgeon.

The Berry sensibility was also retained with melodramatic camera zooms, a musical finale and a 1970s feel (albeit now located mainly in Toast's hairdo). This doesn't entirely get the BBC off the hook - they still need to commission more Snuff Box - but with the help of co-writer, Father Ted's Arthur Mathews, Berry hasn't had to restrain his imagination. Squeezing the larger-than-life luvvie Toast into a Sunday night sitcom set-up has just become part of the joke instead.