Frank Skinner

Last week's interviewee, Dave Gorman, becomes this week's interviewer as he poses the questions to Frank Skinner. In fact, we hear more of Gorman's mirthful laugh than we do of his words, as Skinner talks us through his part-glamorous, part-filthy career in comedy. There are the usual tales of his experiences in a threesome, but a surprising insight on how he dissects every word about his performances. There's also a lovely story about growing up in a house with an outside toilet - David Baddiel is convinced that his friend Frank was raised in the 1920s.

Yes, It's the Ashes (Radio 5 Live, 11.00am) is a bold move for this network, a new, live, topical comedy show. Host Andy Zaltzman strides to the wicket with guest Frank Skinner for banter about Ashes series old and new.

The funniest thing that's ever resulted from this show is definitely Newsnight having to repeat Frankie Boyle's joke about the queen. The repetition is absolutely hilarious. She's shouting at him by the end, and he's her boss. Anyway, this week will see Frankie Boyle try to make the sickest joke about Jacko, Hugh Dennis doing a rubbish impression, Russel Howard letting himself down by gooning and Andy Parsons delivering lines in a really irritating "de-de-DEE, de-de-dur" fashion. Of the guests, Frank Skinner will be laconic and Gina 'Did I mention that my parents are Nigerian?' Yashere will be practically edited out. Really, it's not awful.

Other than the editor and owners of The Daily Telegraph, the only folk actively praying for the expenses ballyhoo to continue are Dara O'Briain, Russell Howard, Frankie Boyle, Hugh Dennis and that bloke who looks like Matt Lucas' character out of Krod Mandoon (Andy Parsons). Let's hope they make the most of it as guests Frank Skinner and Gina Yashere join the teams.

Speaking of cricket, much was made during the Ashes series of 2005 of the footballification of the game, whereby people who didn't know one end of a bat from the other were caught up in the excitement of a great series. For a time, the summer game became as much of a topic of conversation as the year-round game. It was, to a cricket fan, a frankly unedifying sight and sound, epitomised for me when Adrian Chiles, who had always come across as an amiable if slightly dull broadcaster, went on the radio before the last Test and said that he hoped the match would be rained off so that England could win the Ashes. Only a football fan puts the result ahead of the game. Luckily the next series, in Australia, was a whitewash and the likes of Chiles went back to having sleepless nights about the fortunes of West Bromwich Albion, leaving cricket to cricket lovers, not lovers of events.

But now the Australians are back, the first Test starts on Wednesday (ball by ball coverage on Test Match Special, 5 Live Sports Extra and Radio 4 longwave) and once again the broadcasters will be hoping that Ashes fever will grip the sort of people who think that Andrew Flintoff's first name is Fred. On Saturday there was the first of six "comedy" chat shows under the title Yes It's the Ashes (Radio 5 Live, 11am), in which Andy Zaltsmann and other people paid to be funny will be reacting to events during the series in a thigh-slappingly jocular way. Now, it is possible to funny about cricket - the Australians Roy and HG have been doing it for years. But they aim at the correct audience: the knowledgeable cricket fan. Zaltsmann - who does know and love the game, and has blogs on specialist cricket sites to prove it - has aimed his, it seems, at Adrian Chiles.

So Zaltsmann's programme was filled with "hilarious" made-up facts about the greats of the game, as well as reports from Zaltsmann's friends in Australia and America about how the inhabitants were gearing up for the series. Both countries were in the grip of Ashes fever, apparently - but one of the correspondents was lying. Oh, one's aching sides.

There were a couple of star guests - the comedians Phil Cornwell and Paul Sinha - supposedly there to offer humorous insights, but mainly there to laugh at Zaltsmann's tortuous metaphors (although Cornwell did establish his bona fides as a cricket expert by asking what the significance was of the numbers underneath the crest on the players' shirts. If he didn't know that already, what was he doing on a cricket show? Oh, right - being a Tottenham fan).

This Saturday, of course, we'll be three days into the Test, and Zaltsmann will have real cricket to discuss with Frank Skinner. He likes his sport, as we all know. Football, mainly. Big supporter of West Brom. If Skinner comes, can Chiles be far behind?

Suddenly, TV about TV is all the rage. Harry Hill's TV Burp may be off air for now, but next week BBC1 plans a new Telly Addicts-style quiz show called As Seen on TV. Meanwhile, this Channel 4 offering promises to be more left-field. Anyone who's seen Charlie Brooker's withering take on our nation's television, courtesy of BBC4's Screenwipe and Newswipe series, will know what to expect: cruel clips, ingenious put-downs and vented spleen, only this time in a panel-game format. When RT went to press, the show hadn't yet been recorded and the guests were unconfirmed (we're promised David Mitchell and Frank Skinner later in the series), but with Brooker in the driving seat, it should be worth a look.

Expect an arched eyebrow and plenty of sardonic quips as Sandi Toksvig reprises her role as literary quizmaster. Filmed at the Hay festival, this tongue-in-cheek series invites the likes of Rick Wakeman, Jan Ravens, John O'Farrell and Frank Skinner to test their know-how: whereupon Toksvig will separate the truly bookish from the blusterers. Also parading their Eng. Lit. credentials will be returning team captains Sue Perkins and Chris Addison.

They're trying to spice it up, you know. They're doing online bits, they're trying to make the rounds more interactive-y, they're getting hot young comedians as hosts like, um, Frank Skinner. But at heart it will remain the same. And that's okay, really. It sags a bit sometimes but Hislop and Merton are still capable of raising a laugh and are very rarely compromised. We still have no idea how they vote, despite this being the 32nd series, which is quite interesting.

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.