David Mitchell (I)

David Mitchell interview

After six years of writing a weekly Observer column - now anthologised in a new book - David Mitchell answers our questions about finding ideas, talking shop with his wife and saying farewell to Peep Show.

Radio Times review

Occasionally you have to wonder at WILTY?'s booking process. I mean, if you were searching for a quick-witted guest with a sharp sense of humour, would you immediately come up with the name of bushcraft expert Ray Mears? In fact he acquits himself very well, especially considering he's sitting alongside fiercely comic guests such as Jo Brand. She comes up with a ridiculous story about hitch-hiking down to the coast on Christmas Day that could be the basis of a Tarantino film as well as one about squeezing through an ex-boyfriend's dog flap. Both will make you cry with laughter.

Once again the best exchanges are between the peerless Lee Mack and David Mitchell. Carried away with his tale about a fox (illustrated beautifully by Rob Brydon doing an impersonation of Basil Brush), Lee says something that David pounces on with almost Poirot-like powers of deduction. It's very impressive.

Make the most of tonight's edition as WILTY? is taking a break for a few weeks.

Final Peep Show series to air in late 2015

Channel 4 will finally wave goodbye to David Mitchell and Robert Webb as Mark Corrigan and Jeremy "Jez" Usbourne with series nine at the end of next year.

Radio Times review

From the start there are hysterics tonight. Carol Vorderman collapses in helpless laughter at the very idea that fellow guest Kelly Hoppen washes her face with an orange every morning. Mind you, it's not much more plausible that Carol once shared her bed with a lion cub while staying at a safari park.

Both claims are tested to destruction on the comedy workbench, and as ever we're left marvelling at what a gem of a parlour game this is. Just listen to David Mitchell read from the card: "Whenever I see my postman Roy, he shouts 'Oggy! Oggy! Oggy!' and won't move on until I have replied 'Roy, Roy, Roy!'" You so want it to be true.

Radio Times review

David Mitchell and Katherine Parkinson narrate this round of delectably creepy tales. In the first, a surprise party goes horribly wrong when the birthday boy inadvertently reveals he's not as ordinary as his wife has always thought. The Peep Show comedian's nasal voice is perfect for this twisted suburban tale but it's Parkinson's that really sends shivers down the spine. After an earthquake in Basildon, a pensions and payroll team buried beneath the rubble must go to extreme lengths to survive.

Why do they do it? MPs who appear on BBC's Have I Got News For You, I mean.

Conservative Peter Bone was the latest to enter the lion's den and receive a mauling, with an old headline dragged up accusing him of being "Britain's meanest boss" for paying a trainee 87p an hour, and then just as predictably contrasted with another story that he employs his wife as one of the best-paid secretaries in the House of Commons.

It all made for toe-curling viewing as he floundered. But he's hardly alone - off the top of my head I can recall fellow Tory MP Michael Fabricant, former UKIP member Godfrey Bloom (the one who said women who didn't clean behind the fridge were "sluts") and Labour's then defence secretary Bob Ainsworth all making similar gruesome appearances. In every case, vanity triumphs over caution. Boris and Nigel Farage are the only two politicians who can remotely pull off such stunts.

One further point: the Beeb's decision to run its other comedy quiz Would I Lie To You? directly before HIGNFY is a particularly cruel piece of scheduling. The former show, thanks to team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell and host Rob Brydon, is as sharp as a tack and laugh out loud; messrs Hislop and Merton's effort, by contrast, now looks creaking and dated.

The Beeb's decision to run Would I Lie To You? directly before HIGNFY is a particularly cruel piece of scheduling. The former show, thanks to team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell and host Rob Brydon, is as sharp as a tack and laugh out loud; messrs Hislop and Merton's effort, by contrast, now looks creaking and dated.

Radio Times review

Miles Jupp joins David Mitchell's team tonight. Yes, Jupp and Mitchell, side by side at last - it's like a posh-comic supergroup. At one stage, as Mitchell is in the midst of a typically heated interrogation of an opponent, Jupp turns to him and murmurs, "David, even if you don't believe him, you don't need to be angry about it." At which Mitchell yells, "I'm trying to break him!"

Jupp also tells a brilliant story about having to tell neighbours that their cat had died, while he himself happened to have his face painted as a kitten. But in the end, it's one of those episodes that Lee Mack carries almost single-handed. When he's on this form, there's no one quicker.

Film roles for Mitchell, Eldon and Brigstocke

David Mitchell, Kevin Eldon and Marcus Brigstocke are to appear in a new family film. The three guest star in The Friday Download Movie.