Press clippings Page 2
News Quiz: Why will there be no end of the peer show?
It's Friday, so here's a little treat from tonight's News Quiz, featuring Sue Perkins, Mark Steel, Jeremy Hardy and Hugo Rifkind.
Jaine Sykes, BBC Comedy, 21st January 2011Joanna Page: 'They said I was rubbish'
She made it through ten years of bit parts to play Stacey in the hit comedy, but the actress says that she is ready to be a housewife.
Hugo Rifkind, The Times, 21st November 2009Shooting Stars is back! Show us the scores, George Dawes! Isn't that great news? I think so. As always with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's surreal quiz show (Tuesday, BBC Two), I found about a third of it hilarious, another third perfectly acceptable, and the final third far too weird to comprehend for even a moment. Aside from last year's Christmas Special, the show has been away since 2002. Could it really have been so long? And how would it have aged?
Um, fine. I think. Or maybe it has just aged at the same speed as I have. Vic and Bob have become less like your weirdo neighbours and more like a pair of creepy old uncles, which suits them very well. Bob suddenly seems to bear a startling resemblance to Martin Freeman, although I suppose that might also have been the case last time around, and we just wouldn't have known. Ulrikakaka is back, and Matt Lucas, incredibly, is too. Does anybody know what has happened to Mark Lamarr? Is he OK? They've given us Jack Dee instead ("a sweaty moccasin!" said Vic), which seems perfectly respectable, and also a sort of delivery-man character comic, who might be a regular feature.
In part, I suppose, Shooting Stars was such fun because it was like meeting up with some old friends and hearing them tell all the same old jokes. Will new audiences find them funny, too? Or will they just be baffled and a little scared, like Christine Bleakley was when Vic started rubbing his thighs? Not a clue. Time will tell. I'd quite like to see them hit each other with frying pans in the next episode, though. I've missed that.
Hugo Rifkind, The Times, 29th August 2009Alan Davies on QI, being attacked and that tramp
With QI and Jonathan Creek, Alan Davies established himself as comedy's good-natured boy next door. But, as he publishes a memoir of his teenage years, he reveals a rebellious young man at odds with life in Eighties Essex.
Hugo Rifkind, The Times, 22nd August 2009Jonathan Pryce Interview
Is he happiest as Hamlet or hamming it up ... The Times asks will the real Jonathan Pryce reveal himself?
Hugo Rifkind, The Times, 15th November 2008