Charlie Brooker

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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.

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Keith Allen: Charlie Brooker produces vacuous nonsense

Maverick actor Keith Allen has hit out at journalist and broadcaster Charlie Brooker in this week's Radio Times, branding the latter's work "vacuous nonsense".

More standups in the return of Charlie Brooker's So Wrong It's Right show on Thursday on Radio 4. This is a strange show. Brooker is a scurrilously witty man, but his humour, like David Mitchell's, lies in his anger. There is no anger in this programme. And although it purports to be about failure - asking its competitors to tell anecdotes about when they've made fools of themselves - it's actually about comedians shoe-horning little bits of their routines on to the radio. In the hope of getting more broadcasting work.

The first series of this panel game went out late at night, but series two has won a place in the post-news chuckle slot. The premise is simple: host Charlie Brooker invites three panellists to share their experiences of life's low points (Modern Life Is Putrid is one discussion point) or dream up worst-case scenarios in topics ranging from soaps to boy bands, and off they go. It's pure Brooker territory, of course, but he's a master at highlighting the comedy of the dark side, and it's done in a warm, mutually-inclusive, sharing way that's curiously uplifting. And funny. This episode features Rufus Hound, Holly Walsh and Mark Watson and it's a cracker. The only downside is that you won't be able to see Hound's magnificently voluminous trousers.