Harry Hill

I Can't Sing!: a musical with the X Factor?

Harry Hill has left TV Burp and turned his attention to writing a musical that sends up The X Factor - with Simon Cowell's help.

Harry Hill: now giving his X Factor musical 110%

TV Burp made Harry Hill the king of teatime telly. Now, with the blessing of Simon Cowell, he's written an X Factor musical, I Can't Sing - and he promises it will be funny.

Harry Hill on making a mockery of the X Factor guru

With its singing dogs and rapping hunchbacks, Harry Hill's new X Factor musical mercilessly sends up Simon Cowell. So how DID the comedian persuade the pop mogul to back it? The West End's unlikeliest duo reveal all...

Harry Hill: On physical comedy and Slapstick Festival

Looking at his more than colourful body of work over the years, Harry Hill appears to be one of modern comedy's most effortless physical comics.

Harry Hill & Omid Djalili for Slapstick festival

Barry Cryer, Omid Djalili, The Goodies, Harry Hill, Terry Jones, Phill Jupitus, Paul McGann, Lucy Porter and Tim Vine will be among the celebrities who will be visiting Bristol between 24 and 26 January.

Harry Hill interview

Harry Hill has moved away from prime-time TV with a Simon Cowell-baiting musical.

If the 90 per cent empty auditorium in which I saw this film earlier this week is any guide, TV comic Harry Hill has not struck gold, but something much smellier, with his graduation to the big screen.

Maybe it's Marmite, for people either love or hate his brand of comedy. As with Marmite, if you don't have the taste for it, it's not easily acquired, and it won't be acquired here.

Like Russ Abbot and Freddie Starr, before him, Hill revels in the adjective 'madcap', and there is certainly a strong madcap element to this tale of the ever-genial Harry and his nan (an exceedingly game Julie Walters) taking their apparently terminally-ill hamster (in fact, a cuddly toy) to Blackpool.

On the way they run into Jim Broadbent, playing a three-armed female cleaner in a nuclear power station, and Sheridan Smith, who plays the princess in a nautical tribe of shell people. Meanwhile, they are pursued by two villains dispatched by Harry's evil identical twin Otto (Matt Lucas).

Hill has attracted some top-notch British talent. Whether they read the script first is open to question.

Otto is cross because he was given up for adoption to a group of Alsatians in Kettering, and from that you get a hint of the kind of humour that prevails.

It's surreal, for sure, but the kind of surrealism that makes you sink lower and lower in your seat, wondering whether to make a dash for the exit.

If you do sit it out, though, there's some enjoyment to be had in spotting the comedy references - to The Goodies, The Lavender Hill Mob, even Charlie Chaplin's City Lights.

But I'm afraid that serves mainly to remind us what good comedy is, and what this isn't.

Harry Hill's nativity scene painting

The comedian recasts the birth of our Lord with Nigella, Miley and Tom Daley.

The Harry Hill Movie - review

Exactly what you'd expect, which is either good or bad depending on your Hill position. It seems churlish to criticise it for being rubbish when being rubbish is the whole point.

Screenplay isn't so much offbeat as utterly feeble

Harry Hill's big screen debut is a bit of a misfire.