Derren Brown

Now here's a treat for an Easter Monday night; just as you look back fondly on the four-day bank holiday weekend and look forward not too fondly to returning to work tomorrow, Channel 4 have taken it upon themselves to cheer you up. They've skimmed the cream of comedy talent for a gala night dedicated to making us laugh, while raising funds for the Great Ormond Street Hospital's Children's Charity. The night will fund two new anaesthetic rooms, allowing parents to stay with their children right up until they enter the operating theatre. Make sure you watch tomorrow's brilliant documentary, Great Ormond Street (9pm BBC2), to get some idea of the astonishing work done at the hospital. The cast of comics is a glittering one: David Mitchell, Bill Bailey, Catherine Tate, Jack Dee, James Corden, Jo Brand, Jonathan Ross and many, many others will perform stand-up routines in front of a capacity crowd at the massive O2 Arena in London. As a nice little bonus, Robert Webb, Ricky Gervais, Derren Brown and Johnny Depp, who can't be there in person, have filmed comic sketches especially for the night.

Channel 4, Friday night, around 9.50pm: Derren Brown attempts to stick viewers to their sofas. Channel 4, Friday night, 10pm: Peep Show begins with Jez and Mark getting rid of their old sofa. Mark to Jez: "I suppose you never really sat on that sofa much did you/ Maybe just for about 100,000 hours..." Serendipitous scheduling? Canny planning by Objective Productions? Or do Derren's powers go further than we thought...?

Brown and Peep Show bump C4's ratings

C4 had a bumper ratings night on Friday, with Derren Brown's second experiment peaking with 3.4m viewers, and the return of Peep Show scoring record ratings.

I'm going to do a Derren Brown now and predict with absolute certainty that the winner of Most Popular Comedy in the National Television Awards in 2010 will NOT be Peep Show.

How do I know? Well, its ratings are so low it doesn't even make it on to the long-list, so you couldn't vote for it even if you wanted to.

How weird and depressing is that? Perhaps if Derren does succeed in gluing viewers to their sofas tonight, ratings will pick up.

Well done anyway to Channel 4 for keeping the faith. This is series six and they've already commissioned series seven, so the eight or nine of us who do appreciate this comedy gem will be able to get our weekly fix of David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Far from running out of steam, the show just keeps getting better and better and is even in tune with current affairs.

This week, Mark gets Jez a job at the finance company where he works - but the credit crunch is about to hit Croydon and that brand new sofa suddenly looks like a foolish extravagance.

Not for Kevin Bishop the diplomatic approach: his sketch show puts the boot into the foibles of the entertainment industry he's intrinsically a part of. Impersonations - a staple of Bishop's comedy - are pretty thin fare on their own, but this rapid-fire sketch show also hits some worthy targets. In tonight's show, we are shown the tragedy of Derren Brown's cab-driving brother, Darren, see Hugh Laurie's out-takes from House, and - most enjoyably - observe TV comedy's boom-and-bust duo James Corden and Mathew Horne in a remake of On the Buses.