Harry Hill

Harry Hill is NOT quitting TV Burp

Harry Hill has found quitting TV Burp too hard to swallow - and agreed to carry on making the hit show after all.

Harry Hill plays banjolele with pop duo Rizzle Kicks

Harry Hill tries strum-thing different as he appears on stage playing a banjolele.

Well, The Sarah Millican Television Programme made me laugh. Her delivery is a bit tele-prompter stiff for the straight-to-camera sections and the format is a bit woolly (bit of Harry Hill telly commentary, bit of Graham Norton tease-the-guest), but she's funny. "A four-foot child can fit in the mouth of a hippopotamus," she said, apropos of nothing. "I'm guessing that whoever found that out isn't allowed to baby-sit anymore."

Harry Hill on Fairtrade

As Fairtrade Fortnight comes to an end, the people at Fairtrade want us all to continue taking steps throughout the rest of 2012 to help Fairtrade to grow.

The attractiveness of the British teenager may be as hard to detect as the Higgs boson particle, but it doesn't stop TV producers from putting more and more of them before the cameras for our inspection. Following the success of Skins and The Inbetweeners comes Pramface, a comedy of virginity, sex and pregnancy (yes, in that order) among the GCSE-sitting classes, and the discomfiture of their parents.

Sweet-faced but lecherous Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) and his conceited babe-magnet friend Mike (Dylan Edwards) are 16, have just finished their exams and are anxious to crash a party thrown by cooler and more grown-up schoolkids. "There may be scenes of a sexual nature," confides Mike, who wears green shirts with Harry Hill collars, sprays Lynx in his underpants and has made a shag-along soundtrack on his iPhone that ends with the theme to Top Gear. Elsewhere, pretty, 18-year-old A-leveller Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) has been grounded for smoking dope. She has a turn of phrase that shocks her anxious parents, Anna Chancellor and Angus Deayton: "It's not as if you found me snorting coke or straddling my pimp"; "To you the world's just one big fucking naughty step isn't it?" Naturally she escapes the prison of home by falling out of the window and at the posh party she drunkenly kisses Jamie. Minutes later, they are dancing the blanket hornpipe on a leopardskin throw in someone's bedroom, while Jamie's girlfriend Beth attempts to crawl out the door.

Weeks later, along with her A-levels, Laura gets another result: she's pregnant. She has no recollection of her inamorata, only a phone number. When they arrange to meet in a café, she makes for the promising-looking chap sitting by himself, but gets it wrong: the father of her child is the geeky kid at the other table. Oh, no! He's 16, she's 18 - an unbridgeable gap - she has a croissant in the microwave and their young lives are blighted for ever. Or are they?

Chris Reddy dreamt up Pramface and wrote the script, directed by Daniel Zeff. It has nice touches: when Laura rings the number scrawled on a note, to say, "We slept together and now I'm pregnant", she dials the wrong number and her voice is beamed to the phone-speaker of a car driven by a startled bourgeois with his family. But it's all so derivative. Do we need any more jerking-off jokes, orgasm faces, drunk-girl pratfalls? There's a deal too much Americana here too: the plot's straight from Knocked Up; the party scenes of interchangeable babes owe a lot to Beverly Hills 90210; Laura's taut family supper echoes American Beauty. Lacking the rude conviction of The Inbetweeners, it comes over as The Hand-Me-Downers.

Micky Flanagan interview

Harry Hill, Kirsty Wark and Noel Edmonds equal laughter, lust and guilt for the comedian and Mad Bad Ad Show panellist.

ITV in desperate £4m battle to keep TV Burp

ITV bosses are battling to keep hold of Harry Hill "at any cost" - and are offering him a deal worth up to £4million.

Gigglebox weekly #36 - Harry Hill's TV Burp

This week I've been reviewing what I'm hoping will be the final series of Harry Hill's TV Burp. When I say "hoping will be the final series", what I really mean is that I hope if Harry Hill leaves this'll be the final series of TV Burp.

No one is quite sure - or else they are and are playing their cards close to their chests - but this could be the last series of TV Burp. At least, with Harry Hill at the helm.

After 11 years of watching terrible television, Hill has reportedly had enough and is bowing out. But another presenter would be unthinkable. Burp IS Harry Hill. Though he has a team of writers, Hill's surreal stamp is all over the Bafta-winning show.

So make the most of what could be the end. Admittedly Burp has started to lose steam, but it will still be hard to say goodbye to the series that gave us the Zelig-like Knitted Character and the pulverising of Freaky Eaters: all together now, "Chippy chips!"