Jason Manford

Comedy gold: Jason Manford's Live at Manchester Apollo

Perhaps there should be more respect for comedians who do the same old thing extremely well. For truly, you won't find a less innovative standup currently at work than Jason Manford.

Frank Skinner pulls back his magic joystick to reveal another set of extreme dislikes. While the delightfully offbeat Paloma Faith would give Ugg boots the boot and merrily accuses Skinner of voting Tory, she's disconcerted by the tendencies of her fellow guests, blokey comedian Jason Manford and Dragons' Den moneybags Deborah Meaden, who can't bear it when she has to wait behind people rummaging for change in a shop. Like she does her own shopping.

"I think they're both a bit uptight," trills the one and only Paloma Faith as Deborah Meaden and Jason Manford air their grumbles. Has nobody told her that being uptight is a pre-requisite for this show? Here, uptightness is as essential as a plausible way with an anecdote on Would I Lie to You? or a skimpy swimsuit on Splash!

The fact that Meaden and Manford quake with fury when people at checkout queues don't have their money ready to pay might be worrying in some quarters; here it's the stuff of comedy. And Faith has her own hang-ups: she hates Ugg boots so much she fires anyone who comes to work in them.

Your average comedian can earn serious money these days. Your very good one can earn a fortune. Michael McIntyre's latest tour, for example, netted him £21m. But there's more than one way for a stand-up to rake in the cash.

As we'll see in BBC2's new documentary series Funny Business, corporate gigs and telly commercials are huge earners. You want Jason Manford? That'll be 25 grand.

With contributions from the likes of Jo Brand, John Cleese and Rhod Gilbert, the programme also poses the inevitable awkward question. Namely, is a comic selling their soul by doing this stuff? Some people clearly think so. Carmarthen's Rhod Gilbert points out that the only ad he's ever been willing to do is for Visit Wales.

Mind you, I personally reckon he sells it better, sloganwise, in a clip from Live At The Apollo: "Wales is all right! It's not s**t anymore! We've done it up!"

Funny Business, BBC Two, review

Michael McIntyre: £40,000. Ricky Gervais: £25,000. Jason Manford: £25,000. Jo Brand: £10,000-£25,000. Barry Cryer - who after that lot looks an absolute steal - is £2,000-£5,000. This, according to Funny Business, is what it costs to hire the above to tell some jokes at a corporate event.

Half an hour in the company of John Bishop would be reason enough to tune in, but he's plundered his address book and persuaded his celebrity pals to dust off their favourite one-liners.

Robbie Williams, John Prescott, Ricky Hatton, Freddie Flintoff and Warwick Davis all do their best to make us giggle, along with fellow stand-ups Jason Manford, Jason Byrne, Andi Osho and Mick Miller.

Members of the public are also given the chance to exercise their funny bone, including an impish schoolboy with a joke about poo (naturally) and a side-splitting laugh. As you'd expect from that line-up, it's a mixed bag but squeaky clean, so there's no need to cover young ears.

John Prescott shifts his buttocks around in an armchair. 'So the doctor asks me: "What do you mean you want a flu jab in your left arm AND your right arm?". "Well, why do you think they call me 'two jabs'?".' Such is the quality of gags in this joke-based half-hour presented by John Bishop.

This 'show that always makes you laugh' goes for the funny bone by combining snippets of stand-up from the likes of Jason Manford and Ed Byrne with pre-recorded Christmas cracker-worthy contributions from D-lebrities and members of the public. The stand-up is far and away the highlight in comparison to the cast of Chingford health instructors, Wiltshire factory workers and Heather from EastEnders reeling off funnies that range from the bizarre to the hackneyed.

Entertaining enough, but could probably have done without the to-camera spots from a curiously vacant Bishop.

John Bishop's new vehicle is a resolutely family-friendly throwback to the days of The Comedians, when TV standup was a relentless stream of "fella-walked-into-a-bar" jokes that steadfastly avoided any reference to life as actually lived. A cast of thousands are involved, including celebrities from Ricky Hatton and Robbie Williams to ordinary folk, telling creaky jokes that at least crease them up. All this is peppered with occasional pellets of non-abrasive observational humour from smirk-merchants such as Jason Manford.