Harry Hill

As television's best-lubricated and worst-mannered awards ceremony, the British Comedy Awards are often the most fun to watch. While boisterous comics make amusing thank you speeches or heckle each other, it can take all of Jonathan Ross's sangfroid to keep proceedings under control.

This year you could be forgiven for not having seen some of the most nominated programmes. For instance, not many tuned in to E4's beautifully acted sketch show Cardinal Burns, but it gets nods for three awards, and quite right, too. Sky Atlantic's little-watched Hunderby is up for two. Even BBC2's The Thick of It (three), while a triumph, was no ratings blockbuster.

Other shining comic talents include Harry Hill (for the farewell series of TV Burp) and the wondrous Olivia Colman, who gets not one but two nominations as best comedy actress. If she doesn't win for one of them, there should be a stewards' inquiry.

Who's tickled Harry Hill's funny bone in 2012?

Ahead of The British Comedy Awards, Stewart Lee, Miranda Hart and Boris Johnson all receive acknowledgment for their contributions to humour.

Harry Hill's 'X Factor' musical to open in spring 2014

Harry Hill has revealed that he is aiming to launch his X Factor musical in spring 2014.

How Harry Hill got me out of bed, by Al Murray

Everyone needs a guiding light to cajole, advise and encourage. Al Murray on Harry Hill, the man who inspired him to become 'The Pub Landlord'.

There's no getting around the fact that this is a monumental feast of backslapping: a two-hour, self-loving parade where Channel 4 tells itself just how wonderful and influential it is. Which is pretty insufferable if you think about it. Luckily for Channel 4, it does have a lot to cheer about.

This was the channel, after all, that gave us Green Wing and Spaced, Peep Show, Brass Eye and Father Ted. And we should be forever grateful to C4 for giving Harry Hill his TV debut with The Harry Hill Show (1997-99), which figures in the foothills of the top 30, voted for by members of the public.

Elsewhere Dom Joly, from Trigger Happy TV, bemoans the albatross of the giant mobile phone gags, where he yelled "HELLO!" into a fake mobile ("I really hate it [now]. I hate it with a passion uncontested. It's my Emu"), and Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer reveal they filmed their Big Night Out 20 minutes after leaving the pub.

Whatever Happened To Harry Hill? raised the odd snicker

Whatever Happened To Harry Hill? was a daft artifice only brought to life by the belly laugh-inducing clips of the great man himself.

Harry Hill's C4 reunion show interests just 820,000

Harry Hill's Channel 4 reunion was attended by under a million viewers on Thursday night, overnight data suggests.

There was a time, before TV Burp made him a household name, when Harry Hill was best known for a brilliant but utterly bananas Channel 4 sketch show with a cult following.

To say that The Harry Hill Show], which ran from 1997-99, divided people is putting it kindly; even those who adored it probably wouldn't have marked Hill out as a future megastar.

Now as part of Funny Fortnight, which celebrates Channel 4's 30th birthday with a raft of new shows and old favourites, Hill fronts this reunion mockumentary looking at what made Stouffer the Cat, Bert Kwouk and Brother Alan (played by another superstar-in-waiting, Al Murray) into obscure comedy icons. If there isn't a badger parade (remember Tasmin Archer Badger and Gareth Southgate Badger?) we'll all be very cross indeed.

TV Burp might have won Harry Hill a Bafta, but it was his 1997 C4 show that first won him a place in the nation's hearts. Here, we get a retrospective on the programme's three series via the medium of a clips show but, with it being penned and directed by Hill, it's delivered via the medium of a surreal mockumentary that uses past footage to justify oddball storylines. Blurry shots of Hill clutching tins of Sild are overlaid with the claim that 'Harry was off his face on oily fish'. Skits of a pretend Welsh-language soap opera featuring Hill babbling gobbledegook prompt a storyline about miners marching on the C4 building. Clips of THHS regular Burt Kwouk yelling lines like 'Hey Harry, this show doesn't get any funner, does it?' wind up providing the peg for a story about the cast falling out so badly that Hill ends up beating the actor who played his little brother with a stick ('but it was a small stick!'). Very, very strange, but also very, very charming.