Jason Byrne

Q&A: Jason Byrne

'My guiltiest pleasure? Popcorn with cheese and onion crisps and an Aero'

Comedy review: Jason Byrne

The publishing phenomenon of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey has been an absolute gift for Jason Byrne, allowing him to indulge his usual, graphic recreations of grunting, gurning sex while ramping up his avowed incomprehension of the female mind.

Paddy McGuinness's nifty Riverdance footwork makes a lively opener to this new panel show, based on international news clips and with comedians Rhys Darby and Rufus Hound as team captains. But just as Paddy is game enough to show off his skills at Irish dancing, he's game enough to work with some pretty shoddy material.

The clips are on the geriatric side (there's a Star Wars-themed wedding from 2009) and some of the gags they throw up from guests Janice Dickinson, Louis Walsh, Jason Byrne and Rob Rouse are more mean than clever. Thank the casting department, then, for the presence of Rufus Hound, who kindly goes along with some of the soggier gags before interjecting with a proper one of his own. Saturday nights are a tough nut to crack, but Mad Mad World needs some sharper implements.

"A funny family sitcom" is not a phrase I often find myself using these days. But this Jason Byrne creation is that rare thing - and it doesn't take a whole series to bed in. It's offered up a high percentage of laughs-per-line since its debut. That's partly due to the writing, of course, but equal credit must go to the ensemble cast.

Last week, I highlighted Pauline McLynn, who plays Jason's fictional mother, but the star of this episode is Dominic Applewhite (The King's Speech, The Inbetweeners) as belligerent son Dylan, who delivers such telling teenage lines as: "Don't leave me with Gran and Grandad - they smell of Countdown."

Father Figure, Radio 2's latest sitcom about the trials of a modern house husband, written by and starring comedian Jason Byrne, at least jettisoned the usual clattering of crockery and the sound of a front door slamming that invariably points to a semi-detached in Chislehurst. In fact, the family in question were on their way to a wedding and crammed into a hatchback somewhere along the M4.

Byrne was Tom, the put-upon father and husband marooned in the driver's seat fielding questions about when he'll get a bigger car, when they will arrive at their destination, will the vol-au-vents survive the journey and is the bride pregnant. Chief moaner was Mary (Pauline McLynn, better know as Father Ted's Mrs Doyle), Tom's God-fearing mother who couldn't hide her disapproval at her daughter-in-law's decision to hire a cleaner and was a martyr to her husband, Pat, and his failing memory ("you can't even find your way about the house"). Tom's wife, Elaine, was only marginally more reasonable, exhorting her husband to use the hard shoulder to avoid the traffic that had come to a standstill.

Of course, a standstill was required to accommodate half an hour of bickering designed to show the cultural and ideological gaps that remain between the generations. An interminable gag around the word "dogging" ("In the old days of dogging, you'd get a prize for best-dressed," declared Mary) not only underlined the shifting patterns of language but also the way that contemporary comedies, despite acknowledging the variable family set-ups, continue to peddle ancient clichés of dotty old ladies, bossy wives and terminally embarrassed teens.

Imagine the scene: you're trapped in a motorway traffic jam with bickering parents, a wife who does not get on with them, and a surly teenage son embarrassed by you all. The comic potential is obvious and writer and star Jason Byrne does not waste a single word or nuance in getting as many laughs as he can from this cross-generation claustrophobia.

The best lines are delivered by Pauline McLynn, who plays his extremely religious mother. She believes "dogging" to be the proud display of pampered pets, which leads to more double entendres on the subject than is right or proper.

Father Figure (Radio 2, 10.00pm) is a new four-part family situation comedy, written by and starring Irish comedian Jason Byrne. He plays Tom Whyte (a version of himself) with Lucy Montgomery as his wife and a supporting cast of such stars as Pauline McLynn and Dermot Crowley, and others who've become headliners since the pilot of this show went out three years ago.

Radio 2's Hot Gossip is a panel show hosted by Claudia Winkleman about celebrity tittle-tattle, but not in the shameless we-don't-care-if-you-think-we're-shallow sense. It is, in fact, propelled by shame.

Winkleman's job is to ask questions about the latest goings-on among the rich and famous to a gaggle of publicity-hungry comics who then spew damning one-liners about said celebrities whom they deem to be lower down the food chain than they are. It's less a case of scraping the barrel than tipping it sideways to see what is lurking beneath it. This explains why Winkleman shrieks and whoops at her guests' every utterance as if living in fear that a nanosecond of silence will bring the audience to their senses and prompt a stampede for the exit.

All on the programme seem to think they are above discussing the antics of bed-hopping footballers or reality television alumni, despite the fact that this is exactly what they have signed up for. This week, Jason Byrne was quizzed about a star of the TV series The Only Way Is Essex; he pleaded ignorance both of the show and its well-known acronym TOWIE, which he said he had assumed was "some sort of slang for a tramp". In another instance, Winkleman puzzled over the identity of the former X Factor singer Cher Lloyd. "Wasn't she in the singing thing?" she asked, making out as if she spends her Saturday nights working through her Tarkovsky collection. She wasn't fooling anyone.

Hot Gossip is for people who claim to loathe Hello! magazine, but make weekly dentist appointments so that they can inhale its contents in the waiting room. Why it exists remains a mystery. If the format seems tired, the people who appear on it sound positively knackered, their exhaustion presumably compounded by their round-the-clock schedule of appearances on identikit BBC panel shows.