Jack Dee

"Jack Dee, with your face like a neglected radish, like a cowboy's crack, like a forgotten tunnel..." Shooting Stars continues to be far funnier than a 17-year-old comedy on its seventh series should be, by way of sticking to what it does best. Tonight, that involves getting Tulisa from N'Dubz and John Simpson into the same room and throwing edam on to Brendan Cole's face. Angelos Epithemiou does a fine job of keeping score - something that doesn't always come easy to football pundit Chris Kamara, who gamely takes all mockery on the chin.

Anyone who remembers the joyously strange experience of watching Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's quiz show when it first appeared in the early 1990s can forgive it almost anything. And they've needed to: it grew tired and staggered on past its natural life span. Then BBC2 revived it for a Christmas special in 2008 and what should have been a museum piece worked better than expected. Now George Dawes, the "big baby" drummer/scorer created by Matt Lucas has gone, to be replaced by shambling burger van owner Angelos Epithemiou (the excellent Renton Skinner). But the blend of surreal sight gags - at one stage a pair of disembodied legs walks across the set unremarked - and daft questions remains the same. Highlights tonight include panellist Jack Dee (with "a face like a scalded sea cadet", according to Vic) having to play a toy drum every time he wants to speak and a brilliant parody of Kerry Katona's TV ads for Iceland. Look out for the sticky potato pistols.

Jack Dee has been winning hearts and minds as the new host of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Enough words have been spoken about the totemic Humphrey Lyttelton, so I'll not weigh them up here. But on the self-titled "antidote to panel games", Dee is the perfect antidote to the cloying comfiness of the audience clapping along to "one song to the tune of another". You're left with the distinct impression that he's flashing them a trademark pitying sneer, and it's like a palate cleanser, allowing you to enjoy the craftsmanship of panelists Cryer, Garden, Brooke-Taylor and, this week, Toksvig.

Bob Mortimer interview

Bob Mortimer reveals more about the series in which Ulrikka Jonsson and Jack Dee captain the celebrity teams, while Vic and Bob pose the questions - and really want to see those fingers!

Jack Dee is perfect host for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

The grumpy comic has taken over from the late Humphrey Lyttleton and proved a hit. But are some presenters simply irreplaceable?

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue returns with Jack Dee in the chair solemnly reading his script and distributing questions. The audience (in Cheltenham) roar their appreciation throughout. In fact, the Clue participants seem under the dangerous delusion that they're at some private party rather than doing a radio show.

The phrase "celebrity roast" sounds like either an inspired idea for a bonfire, a romantic date with a footballer and his friends or some nightmare series, no doubt soon to be commissioned, in which minor soap stars share their favourite recipes. In fact, it refers to the practice whereby a group of comedians takes turns putting down a well-known entertainer as well as each other.

That's what the roast became in America, where it was popularised by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Last week, we got the British version, A Comedy Roast (C4), in honour of, respectively, Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne and Chris Tarrant. For reasons of national morale, it doesn't do to dwell on the difference between those two sets of names.

However, the thinking appears to be that what the show lacks in personalities, it can make up for in vulgarities. Sometimes, that tactic worked under the caustic stewardship of Jimmy Carr, who looked as demonically thrilled as a class clown given permission to swear at his teachers. Carr was responsible for most of the moments of comedy that produced not a laugh, but a gasp, including a joke about Tiswas being the second biggest thing that Lenny Henry had ever been in.

More often, the coarseness was cover for an overreliance on the autocue. As much as he sometimes struggled with reading lines, Dean Martin was never known to resort to the c-word on US TV and nor, come to that, did anyone ever accuse Sinatra of mistaking breast milk for "man gravy". A dry roast this wasn't.

Yet the biggest failing was that no matter how crude the insults served by Jonathan Ross, Jack Dee and a variety of comedians, no one, including the guest of honour, had heard of, none could match the flame-grilled indignity of taking part in the show. A roast that was all sauce and nothing to savour.

And if we're looking to invent new words and phrases, how about "Crap as A Comedy Roast"? You'd use it to describe something that was as awkward and contrived and joyless as Jimmy Carr and chums spending an hour taking the p*** out of someone semi-famous sat opposite them on stage.

"Roasting" is an American tradition: being brutally but lovingly rounded upon by your peers while taking it all with benign grace - think: This is Your Life, You Stupid T***. The US TV version of this features some of the most staggeringly lewd, vicious punchlines I've ever heard, the enormous capacity of Pamela Anderson's vagina, for example, being a recurring theme on hers.

So what was in store for Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne and Chris Tarrant? Uncomfortable oddness, really. Jonathan Ross visibly rattled Brucey with some opening salvos: "He wasn't a pretty baby," he tells the audience, "but he did grow up to be a f***ing ugly adult." What else? Oh yeah: "When the dinosaurs died out, he was taken in for questioning." Arf! The weird thing was that most of the roasters were just typical gun-for-hire, Channel 4-type comedian fodder. Paddy McGuinness did a nervous Who Wants to be a Millionaire? skit on Tarrant, who looked so prickly throughout that you suspect Alan Partridge would have taken a roasting better. Jack Dee slagged everyone off and looked sadder than usual to be doing it. There was one quite funny joke about it being hard to believe the real Sharon Osbourne is here tonight, "because the real Sharon Osbourne is in a black bin bag round the back of a plastic surgeon's in LA!. And she took it all quite well, mainly because she just hooted like as sozzled nan the entire time.

Maybe everyone else loved it. It just seemed weirdly open and honest. I thought the whole point of being British is that we repress our true feelings, so that when they do pop out they're disguised, perhaps in the form of a witty joke or a song or a droll suicide note. Alternatively, we could just stick to slagging people off behind their backs so that we don't have to pretend to hug them in front of Jimmy Carr afterwards. I don't think A Comedy Roast suits us. If someone can work out a passive-aggressive equivalent, however, we may be in business.

Based on an (apparently) successful US model, the UK version of A Comedy Roast sees a parade of utterly uninteresting "celebrities", faux-insulted by a panel of comedians in a kind of This Is Your Life for the Big Brother generation.

Anyway, last night was Sharon Osbourne's turn. Presumably, her casting had more to do with her availability than her suitability; there can be little other explanation. No one, bar no one, needs to hear another word about her, even if it is from the pleasingly snarled lips of Jack Dee.

It's a shame, really, since some of the gags weren't bad at all. Patrick Kielty gave a particularly enjoyable turn. Who knew he could be so vicious? Even Gok Wan, who surely ranks close to Sharon Osbourne in the overexposure stakes, was pretty good. No, the problem isn't the jokes. It's their subject.

Given the level of venom each episode's victims have to tolerate, it seems unlikely that the show would attract anyone but the desperate or the egotistical. Both of which, frankly, I could do without.

Like a best man speech for a celebrity, the roast - where a famous guest of honour is mercilessly insulted by other celebs - is a long-standing ­tradition in the US. Channel 4 has imported the concept and tonight it's the turn of Sharon Osbourne - a human equivalent of an open goal.

Hosted by Jimmy Carr, this is the funniest and also the rudest hour of TV all week, with Jack Dee, Patrick Kielty, Gok Wan, Alan Carr, Louis Walsh, Ronni Ancona, Keith Lemon and Elton John paying acid-tongued tribute to Sharon's extensive plastic surgery, mothering skills and propensity for sending dog poo to her enemies.

And this put-down from Patrick Kielty shows that nothing is too near to the knuckle. "It's fair to say that Ozzy has never strayed," he quips. "He did once make a dash for freedom but after Sharon cut the brakes on the quad bike, he's now learned his lesson..."