Jamie Theakston

Do you remember the day you discovered Kettle crisps? Dawn French does: it was at Kirsty MacColl's house, apparently - and amazing they were too. A revolution in fried potatoes that was up there in hers and Jennifer Saunders's list of top 10 nibbles, as shared with the nation over four daft minutes of primetime Christmas Day radio (French and Saunders, Radio 2). "I had some lovely nuts last night," giggled Saunders. Schoolgirl stuff, it's true, but French and Saunders always mined gold from the silliest, most irreverent material. And so, Dawn French dumped Simon Cowell live on air for Gary Barlow, hoping she would stop having to read Hello! magazine to keep tabs on her celebrity boyfriend. Saunders, thoroughly English in her expert self-deprecation, reeled off a list of prestigious awards her badly reviewed Spice Girl musical, Viva Forever, had won, while French gently ribbed her for her post-cancer press coverage. "You're not even brave any more!"

Best of all was the surprise kiss and tell on celebrity snoggers. Having smooched George Clooney, David Beckham and Brad Pitt over the years, French told Emma Bunton (who popped up on the Someone And Their Mum feature) that none of the world's hottest men came close to matching her real favourite: Jamie Theakston (who knew?), former children's TV presenter and Bunton's breakfast show co-host on Heart FM. But mostly it was a joy to simply listen to French and Saunders chatter in the background of my mum's busy kitchen, emitting exactly the right frequency of festive jolliness without being smug or irritating. No mean feat - you just wish they would do more shows.

Nosheen Iqbal, The Guardian, 27th December 2012

Sean Lock says that he was reluctant to appear on this show. "I knew I'd have to write jokes about Chris Tarrant," he says. "Can you imagine a more barren, uninspiring, emaciated topic than that? I'd rather perform an hour of new material about pylons to a submarine crew after the stripper had cancelled." But after he has set the tone at the start of the programme, there are some wonderful contributions during the evening. Jamie Theakston is unwittingly hilarious because of his inability to read an autocue and Terry Wogan (who says that Tarrant is "always drunk and nobody likes him") gives a masterclass in comic timing. Mind you, Tarrant gives as good as he gets. His performance at the end proves that you don't work in television for more than 30 years without developing impregnable self-assurance.

David Chater, The Times, 9th April 2010

The bbc seems to love its family based sitcoms. But for every My Family, which regularly pulls in the viewers, there is a Mad About Alice, the laugh-free show with Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston that was put out of its misery after just one series.

This new offering, with Caroline Quentin and Neil Dudgeon, sits somewhere in between. There are some witty moments but these are drowned out by more regular unfunny happenings, so unimaginative and staid it's embarrassing.

Actors of Quentin and Dudgeon's calibre deserve much better scripts. They play Maddy and Jim, divorced parents who have recently married and are adapting to life as one giant family.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 8th January 2009