Jasper Carrott

Gig review: Tim Minchin

This was not an easy crowd to win over, outdoors and in pretty much broad daylight. Even veteran compere Jasper Carrott struggled a bit.

Jasper Carrott interview

"Comedy is the only art form with a measured response. Comedy means different things to different people and everyone who watches comedy is a comedy critic."

Jasper Carrott: We must stop Birmingham ghettos

The comedian has called on ethnic minorities to put city and country before community - before it is too late.

Jasper Carrott on touring with drummer Bev Bevan

When Jasper Carrott set out on a 20-date tour with his boyhood friend and legendary rock drummer Bev Bevan last year, the response was universally rapturous.

Leicester Comedy Festival: Vote for legend of comedy

Jasper Carrott, Ken Dodd, Lenny Henry, Nicholas Parsons, Victoria Wood and Jennifer Saunders are on our comedy legends shortlist.

Review: Dave's Leicester Comedy Festival Preview Show

Securing Jasper Carrott to host Leicester's comedy festival preview show was something of coup.

To an entire generation, Griff Rhys Jones might be famous for being the man who takes Rory McGrath and Dara O'Briain sailing, climbs mountains, and presents It'll Be Alright On The Night.

The last in this series of three sees him back at the BBC performing the kind of sketches that made him a household name on Not The Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones.

And while the humour is so comfortably old-fashioned your first impression might be that these sketches have been sitting in a drawer since the 1990s, on closer inspection you'll see that there's a whole new bunch of modern obsessions to joke about.

The Reservoir Dogs spoof featuring Griff as Mr Green and former EastEnder Larry Lamb is a lovely mix of the old and the new. But one sketch about firearms in schools, is so mis-judged it wouldn't be a laughing matter in this or any decade.

Griff's other guest stars, Hugh Bonneville, Tom Hollander and Kevin McNally, are well chosen.

But the real draw of the night sees him reunited with his comedy and business partner Mel Smith for a brand new head-to-head sketch - their first together in 16 years.

After resurrecting the comedy of Lenny Henry and Jasper Carrott, there are plenty of other folk who were funny in the 80s who we'd like to see dusted off. More please.

Review: The One Jasper Carrott (BBC1)

Taken as a whole, The One Jasper certainly wasn't great, but the strength of Carrott's stand-up material was better than I expected without longtime writers Mike Whitehill and Steve Knight (although I missed hearing another of his rambling "true stories", like the one about the vicious cat he had to pickup using a vacuum cleaner, or the infamous garden mole).

Remember when they gave Ronnie Corbett his own show last Christmas and called it The One Ronnie? The idea is the same here, as we start a trio of shows involving veteran comics (Griff Rhys Jones and Jasper Carrott follow) who revive old characters and link up with guest stars. Lenny Henry has more old characters than most, and revives memories of sex-obsessed old gent Donovan Bogarde and "cru-shall" Brixton DJ Delbert Wilkins, now coming at us via YouTube.

The best sketch is a showcase for Peter Serafinowicz, playing a white bloke who can't stop talking in black patois, and there are decent spoofs of Twilight and Cee Lo Green videos.

He's made his fortune as one of the main shareholders of the production company behind Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? but in the early 1970s and '80s Jasper Carrott plied his trade on the TV comedy circuit. Tonight he dusts off the old jokes for a one-off show revisiting some of his most popular characters, with actor Robert Powell accompanying him for a rerun of The Detectives. There's alsp a set by Carrott's side-project, rock supergroup Belch.