Charlie Brooker

Jesse Armstrong to work on Brooker's Black Mirror

Jesse Armstrong, who has previously worked on Peep Show, will write an episode of Charlie Brooker's Channel 4 drama Black Mirror.

Charlie Brooker: Why idolise footballers?

A few months ago, Wayne Rooney swore into the camera during a live televised football match, and the world briefly reacted as though he'd burst into a toddler's birthday party and brutally molested a duckling.

Charlie Brooker's royal wedding TV Go Home

Charlie Brooker gives us a guide to what the nation will be watching on the big day...

For those not aware of this show, The Unbelievable Truth is a panel game, and as is law when it comes to panel games, it involves David Mitchell.

He acts as host of "the panel game built on truth and lies", in which four comics deliver a lecture on a subject which is mostly lies, except for five pieces of unlikely true information which have to be smuggled past the rest of the panel.

In this week's edition, Tony Hawks gave a 'lecture' on mice, Arthur Smith on Sir Walter Raleigh, Rhod Gilbert on soup, and Mitchell's 10 O'Clock Live co-star Charlie Brooker on his specialist subject of television.

The show is rather like QI, in that it is partly about unlikely trivia. Among the things mentioned were the fact that Bruce Forsyth first appeared on the TV before World War Two began and that Raleigh's widow kept his severed head in a velvet bag which she carried around with her (although this fact has already been on QI).

Mind you, a lot of the lies mentioned are things you really hope are true, such as Swindon having a "Day of the mouse" in which the mice get to rule the town, or Raleigh farting during the coronation of Charles I.

My only problem with The Unbelievable Truth is that I think some of the facts might be wrong. One of the things that regularly crop up is obscure but daft American laws, like how in Nebraska you have to brew soup if you are also selling beer. I always suspect that these 'laws' are just made up and just included because they sound funny.

Charlie Brooker on the AV debate

Both sides of the Alternative Vote debate are treating the public with outright contempt.

Channel 4's 10 O'Clock Live does show some signs of structural adjustment, which, coincidentally or not, address objections made by reviewers of January's opening programme.

Critics complained, for example, that the content was relentlessly verbal - with Jimmy Carr, Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell delivering exaggerated rants in rotation - and, in the progress to last Thursday's 12th edition (of a scheduled first series of 15), the visual material has progressively increased. Carr's opening monologue is now illustrated with punningly captioned pictures, and the comedian also performs more and more dressing-up sketches.

Two flaws, though, are stubbornly consistent. Lauren Laverne, whose original duties amounted to little more than introducing the boys, has not been permitted much evolution, and the first show's unrelieved liberal agenda continues: the four main performers, the majority of the guests and most of the audience seem to be on the same side over most of the issues.

Even so, I think this show can justifiably claim to have suffered at the beginning from the seeming eagerness of some journalists, bloggers and tweeters to see Carr, Mitchell and Brooker flop: late-night satire shows have generally launched newcomers, and there was a slightly smug sense of a celebrity benefit concert about this one. But, three months on, 10 O'Clock Live maintains a high gag rate and, last week, a terrific bust-up over phone-hacking between John Prescott and a News of the World journalist.

Charlie Brooker: Making 13-year-old girls cry

The outpouring of bile directed at 13-year-old Rebecca Black for her YouTube song Friday shows how unhinged such mass hate campaigns can be.

10 O'Clock in danger of becoming Charlie Brooker Show

The 10 O'Clock Live team did a decent job yet again, but the programme is in danger of becoming The Charlie Brooker Show.