Charlie Brooker

Charlie Brooker: David Cameron is a lizard

Graeme Archer of the Daily Telegraph was less than impressed with my last column in which I called David Cameron a lizard. I fear in his rush to reprimand the "Modern Left", he has overlooked one key fact: David Cameron is a lizard.

Charlie Brooker & Twitter: To flame or not to flame?

Having enraged half of Twitter this week by comparing David Cameron to a lizard, Charlie Brooker is now retweeting his flamers in a bid to shame them. So what is the correct etiquette when you think a celeb is talking crap?

There are times when you wonder if this show wouldn't work just as well as a head-to-head between David Mitchell and Lee Mack - everyone else is making up the numbers really, and they know it. You can imagine a programme where the two of them simply sat there and mocked each other's different worlds, and a very funny show it would be.

But probably not as funny as this is, because it's often the rogue elements that make it - such as Nigel Havers this week claiming he once went out with a flamenco dancer who turned out to be a man. Mack's flights of fancy as he interrogates that story are inspired, as is Mitchell's cross-examination of Charlie Brooker's far-fetched Valentine's Day anecdote. I mean, what kind of teenager was he?

Box set club: Nathan Barley

Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris's excellent sitcom isn't quite the museum piece you'd imagine - it's well futile.

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.