Dave Gorman (II)

The Museum of Curiosity has the potential to be a great format. But with almost half of this episode was given over to introducing the guests, the actual idea of the programme (guests suggest curious ideas that get put into a museum) seemed to get lost. Hopefully this is just a quirk of this episode. The strength of the panel, comprising Brian Eno, Dave Gorman and Viz founder Chris Donald, means their introductory chats with host John Lloyd are funnier than their actual nominations for which they only had a very short time left over.

Sean Lock acts as the "curator" but this seemed to only further clutter the programme. Couldn't this and the host role have been combined into one, thereby allowing more time for the format to breathe?

Radio review: The Museum of Curiosity

The Museum of Curiosity (Radio 4) was a disappointingly lopsided listen. Before the contributors - Brian Eno, Chris Donald and Dave Gorman - gave their items to the museum, the chat was funny and flowing, and quite endearingly quirky.

Where else can you find the Battle of Waterloo, a pineapple and the Big Bang but in this glorious establishment? The museum is open for its second batch of exhibits, starting with Dave Gorman who wants to put in "the urge to press the red buttons that you know you shouldn't press". I'll let you find out what silly and sensible lots Brian Eno and Chris Donald want to assign. QI with even more jokes. Made me bark with laughter.

Dave Gorman's guest tonight is a slimmed-down, healthy-looking Johnny Vegas, who is called upon to decide which ideas are pure genius and which are the product of unsound minds. One scheme is for so-called dating insurance: a couple puts money in a pot every week and, when they split up, the one who has been dumped gets the cash. Better still is the gentleman who has invented a box for the torture of inanimate objects. Why? "Because inanimate objects are so intensely annoying and there are very few ways you really get back at them." The most alarming moment is when Vegas gets into bed with Gorman to demonstrate a fully wrap-around duvet. Forces are unleashed that are very hard to control.

This fun little show has been coming on leaps and bounds over the weeks after a slightly off-colour start. Tonight sees the always lovely Dave Gorman joined by Johnny Vegas, who is going to bring his tap-room wit and stout clagged phlegm to the proceedings. As ever, the real stars of the show are the contestants who have come up with 'genius' ideas and invention that are wilfully impractical and often quite surreal.

Frank Skinner is Dave Gorman's guest, and among the ideas competing for the title of "genius" tonight is a face mask lined with razor blades to make shaving easier. That one was a nonstarter. There is a lady who suggests that all maths teachers should have to use dance as a teaching aid. The most popular idea is a proposal to attach prisoners to dynamos as an alternative source of energy. Skinner himself is in favour of it. "I like the idea of old age pensioners saying 'Cycling is too good for them'," he says.

Week two of this clever and entertaining new comedy (new to TV, at least) and host Dave Gorman is joined for this one by Frank Skinner. The idea, remember, is to weigh up viewers' suggestions for a better world, with tonight's ideas including melon-flavoured cucumbers and a cunning new way to power the national grid, using prisoners on exercise bikes.

Genius presented by Dave Gorman, is a comedy version of Dragons' Den in which members of the public describe their own rib-cracking inventions. Normally I'm a great fan of Gorman's, but he's struggling here, largely because the idea feels undernourished. The one funny idea - a raincoat with an inbuilt hat in the sleeve to put over a girl's head - was presented by someone who sounded like a plant. The others were simply feeble.

Everyone laughed a lot, but there was a sense that they were doing so in order to keep the balloon inflated. Otherwise, it would never have left the ground.

Genius offered a little bit more in the way of things to look at than I've Never Seen Star Wars did. Things like a whiteboard with felt pens, a scale model of a running track, complete with moving athlete and a pair of shoes, but even these failed to disguise the show's Radio 4 origins.

Dave Gorman hosts, aided and abetted by a guest celebrity, and together they sift through eccentric innovations and idiotic inventions sent in by the public. Such as the 100-metre high shoes to allow the unfit to compete in Olympic sprints by falling forward. Which is funny, but the gag is over once the idea has been shared, rendering Gorman's subsequent product analysis largely superfluous.

Genius is essentially BBC2's replacement for QI, which was promoted to BBC1 for its current run. The ever-likeable Dave Gorman presents the series, which gives a platform for members of the Great British Public to share their "genius" ideas. It's essentially a silly version of Dragons' Den, with harebrained ideas like a jacket with a hood secreted in an arm-zipper, to enable a man to shelter a girl from rain by putting an arm over their shoulder.

The comedy is reliant on the idea being pitched and Gorman's ability to comically evolve and test the brainwave, so it's a little hit-and-miss, but generally this showed promise. And the would-be inventors were often funnier than Gorman and guest Catherine Tate combined, which was a surprise.