Frank Skinner

The Bubble is yet another new topical panel show designed to capture the Have I Got News for You/QI audience. Its twist is to sequester participants away for three days without access to any media, and then show them a series of news and gossip stories. They must decide which are real and which are made-up. David Mitchell presents. Frank Skinner, Victoria Coren and comic Reginald D. Hunter are The Bubble's first victims.

This new comedy quiz show is based on the premise that some news stories are so preposterous that they might as well have been made up. A group of comedians and celebrities are locked away for four days in a media-free "bubble", without access to phones, TV, newspapers or the internet. Oddly enough, there was no shortage of volunteers. When they emerge, the host David Mitchell confronts them with reports, headlines and images, some real and some invented. They have to distinguish one from the other. Frank Skinner and Victoria Coren are the contestants tonight, while future guests include Marcus Brigstocke, Clive Anderson, Sue Perkins and Germaine Greer. Already a big success in Israel and Poland, the quiz looks likely be a lot of fun.

There was once a bloke in a bubble...

. . . who wasn't allowed any contact with the outside world. So he ended up telling stories like this.

David Mitchell hosts a new comedy-news quiz. Now that's what we call a game-changer. No previews available, as it's going to be topical news from the week, but it sounds like Celebrity Big Brother meets Call My Bluff and Mr & Mrs: three slebs are locked in a "media-free zone" for three days and, on exiting, have to pick out the genuine news stories from the invented ones. Tonight, it's the turn of Frank Skinner, Reginald D. Hunter and some poker player to sort out the headlines from the head-lies.

Frank Skinner hints at new World Cup song

Comedian Frank Skinner has said that he wants to write a new World Cup song to follow the success of his hit football anthem, Three Lions.

Here, in Russell Brand: Skinned (Channel 4), is another faintly ridic-ulous man. He's being interviewed, rather well, by Frank Skinner, although, to be fair, Frank doesn't have to work hard. It just comes pouring out: drugs (again - shut up about the drugs), the women, Sachsgate (he's both sorry and not sorry), ambition. And it's very good, because Russell Brand is very good - funny, clever, quick, eloquent (he knows how to use words like dichotomy and caveat). Sometimes you have to marvel at the man.

I don't love him, though, wouldn't get into a hot tub with him (very happy to with Frank Skinner, however). Maybe it doesn't matter: you don't need to love someone for them to make you laugh. It's probably for the same reason that lots of men don't love him: he's funnier and more attractive than we are, and he's going to mate with our women. But there's more to it. In spite of his chattiness, his tactile rubberiness, there's something cold about him. Look into his eyes. He's a lizard, that's what he is.

I've always wanted to dislike Russell Brand, but I can't quite do it. That said, I don't know what it is about him that I do like, I just know I can't dislike him as much as many do.

Even after Sachsgate - which demonstrated a level of purile stupidity that I expected from Ross but not Brand - I still can't wholly have an aversion to the man. I suspect it might be nothing more than the fact that he makes me laugh, and it's hard to abhor someone who amuses you.

He's witty, he can - one assumes, given the number of ladies he's been involved with - be charming and he can be self-deprecating when it's required. However, this sit down with Frank Skinner told us nothing we didn't already know and was, to be honest, just a pi**ing contest between the two to see who could be funniest.

We heard from both several tales of how fame had gone to their heads, both the ones they keep on their necks and the other ones, and the effect that something Brand described as "oestrogen mist" had on them. Basically, they have both been offered nookie on a plate from adoring female fans and both have partaken from that bottomless trough often.

Skinner questioned the moral rectitude of doing so and seemed genuinely embarrassed that he'd taken full advantage of that particular form of hero worship, but Brand answered the relatively serious question with jokes, so it lost any depth it might have had.

There was of course lengthy discourse about the Andrew Sachs affair and Brand rather confusingly at once apologised - again - and then refuted that he'd done anything that wrong in the first place. He did however - rightly in my opinion - proffer that much of the fuss wasn't about the incident itself but the wider issue of celebrity salaries and the BBC licence fee.

Overall, this was like Jeremy Paxman interviewing Bungle after a spliff; one didn't expect it to be deeply serious, just somewhat informative in its endeavour, but it just didn't have the energy to get past the giggling stage.

Russell Brand: Skinned was the title of a well-conducted inquisition by Frank Skinner of the wild-haired comedian whose androgyny, priapism and former drug addiction has made him, it seems, no less irresistible to women. Brand prides himself on his love of words, but he is no Will Self. In one excruciating extract from a show, he insisted that an audience member's poster "KAT HEART U" needed an apostrophe. Nor is he as clever as he thinks he is. He jeered at a correspondent who, re Sachsgate, suggested that he had targeted the elderly actor because he was "Spanish", yet as an excuse said that when he made the notorious phone-call he had in his mind that it was "Manuel on the other end". The interview made it clear that Brand's current addiction is not to narcotics or even sex but to fame. In this, he is the perfect comic for our celebrity-greedy age.

There was no danger whatsoever of anyone wresting control of Russell Brand: Skinned from its star, even though the second half of the title referred to Frank Skinner, whose sit-down interview with Brand formed the spine of this shapeless and curiously unrevealing documentary. Or at least it seemed unrevealing, because so much of Brand's life comes pre-revealed. Unfortunately for the programme-makers, their subject has built his stand-up career on confessional routines, so even when he was describing his most private thoughts to his fellow comedian, I felt like I'd heard it all before.

Still, neither man is ever less than engaging, especially when they're talking about themselves. Brand, much of whose recent Scandalous tour revolves around so-called Sachsgate, spoke intelligently about the affair. Clear-eyed when it comes to his own mistakes, he also argued convincingly that they were amplified by the context of the disputed BBC licence fee, Jonathan Ross's salary, and the hammed-up outrage of the press.

The most interesting moments of their conversation came when Skinner paralleled Brand's experiences with his own comparatively sedate career. Skinner admitted to having "done a lot of groupie-ing" in his time, but was troubled by the blot such behaviour might have left on his moral copybook. Brand agreed, but often, he said, he's simply overcome by the "oestrogen-filled mist" that descends on his gigs. He created his womanising, Byronic goth persona, he confessed, partly as a substitute for the drugs and alcohol that once sustained him. Now that it's brought him the fame he craved, he's stuck with it. "My personality does not work without fame," he joked. "Without fame, this haircut just looks like mental illness."

Skinner also praised Brand for having - with his distinctive estuary eloquence - made it cool to be articulate, a fantastic compliment from a comedian who'll probably always be associated with mid-Nineties laddism, which sadly had the opposite effect. At one point, Brand went into lyrical detail about his ritual, pre-gig poo, describing it as a physical and spiritual cleansing that prepares him to meet his adoring public. Hmm, Skinner replied, "Most comedians just call that 'the comedy shit'."

The world would be a sadder place if Russell Brand quit the public eye - he's scarily intelligent, supremely funny, startlingly honest and can't last a day without pushing buttons. In this documentary, ex-alcoholic Frank Skinner interviews Brand about his wild career, drug addiction, relationship with the media and even his dandy image, which Brand makes sense of using Simpsons creator Matt Groening's maxim that 'good cartoon characters are recognisable in silhouette'. A fascinating account, interspersed with early and recent performance footage.