Harry Enfield

Harry Enfield: 'I don't like doing me'

His characters were once the talk of every office and school yard. Then Harry Enfield disappeared. He didn't want to do quiz shows, his writing stalled. Now he's back doing what he does best: other people.

Audio Interview: Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse

Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse tell Richard Bacon that they are thinking of going on tour.

The gimmick of this new comedy series by Harry Enfield writers Bert Tyler-Moore and George Jeffries is that Pete (Rafe Spall), a twentysomething aspiring journalist, has his life described by two commentators - one a mad Geordie, the other rather staid - who provide sports-style analysis and statistics as Pete copes with his dysfunctional group of friends. The opener revolves around Pete's attempts to woo an attractive eco-activist. It's very silly and occasionally crude, and whether it will stay funny as the novelty value wears off remains to be seen, but it's promising none the less.

Harry Enfield is planning for his forthcoming sketch show to air without a laugh track - a first for the sketch shows that have made his name.

Strawberry Enfields forever

Comedy legends Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse sing I Wanna Old Your Hand - as they play an ageing Beatles band in a sketch.

Enfield comedy show ideas stolen

Ideas and material for a new series of Harry Enfield's comedy show with Paul Whitehouse have been stolen from a car.

Didn't he dress up as a gay man, a woman in a fur coat? That's what people say at the start of David Walliams's tribute to "a light entertainment icon". Then, intercut with soundtrack, it sounds as if he's interviewing the man himself. Emery died in 1983, having been a fixture in broadcast comedy for decades. "He was a good old-fashioned pro," says Michael Grade. "He loved going to work." So why did he fall out of fashion? Walliams explores that and why today's comedians, himself and Harry Enfield among them, still admire him.

Al Murray's Multiple Personality Disorder is another sketch show to add to the pile; this one less interested in being knowingly hip or an intentional cult, and more a throwback to the mainstream Harry Enfield days of the early-'90s.

Al Murray thankfully rests his increasingly tiresome Pub Landlord persona, and instead gives us a confection of colourful characters. Hit-and-miss is always the phrase applies to sketch comedy, and so it comes to be used here. Murray is an amusing fellow, and there's good support from comedians Simon Brodkin and Jenny Eclair - but only a few sketches stuck in my mind: a married couple who converse in radio advert lingo, dastardly gentleman thief Barrington Blowtorch, and some politically-correct policemen. Worryingly, half the sketches were very thin, obvious or dumb (like a Geordie pretending to be gay to perv on his sexy friend, or a baby in a high-powered business meeting), while a character called Herr Schull (a gay Nazi in pink uniform) was a rather uncomfortable and vaguely homophobic caricature I thought we left behind in the '70s with Benny Hill.

Diplomatic storm over Harry Enfield's 'slur on a nation

His comedy has not always been to everyone's taste. But now Harry Enfield has managed to upset an entire nation. The 47-year-old comedian has caused a diplomatic incident with the Philippines with his BBC1 series Harry And Paul.

Last Thursday the second six-week series of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency began on Radio 4, with our intergalactic sleuth (Harry Enfield, still perfect) somewhat down on his luck and obliged to dress up as a gypsy woman and tell fortunes. Come and warm yourself by this sprig of flaming white heather, he enjoined a record company executive being stalked by a couple of demons. They arranged to meet the following morning at 6.30 so that Gently could save the terrified man from a fate worse than death. Gently overslept and the man disappeared. Ah well, Gently said, philosophically.