Jenny Eclair

Interview: Jenny Eclair, comedian

Comic is all grown-up but still liable to surprise.

Celebrities come together in Comic Relief kazoo band

Celebrities including Miranda Hart, Jenny Eclair and Stephen Mangan will be forming a special kazoo band as part of Radio 3's Big Red Nose Show.

Jenny Eclair and Dom Joly enter Celebrity Jungle

Comedians Jenny Eclair and Dom Joly will go into the Australian jungle today for reality show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

Jenny Eclair shares her Guide to turning 50

Who needs HRT when you've got cooking sherry and biscuits!

Invented by Ian Messiter in 1967, now starting its 57th season, still brilliantly chaired by resourceful Nicholas Parsons (who got the gig when Jimmy Edwards, the original choice for chairman, said he'd rather play polo than turn up on a Sunday to record the pilot episode). Messiter, who also invented Many a Slip and other fondly remembered amusements, used to wear red socks at recordings, for luck. Perhaps "red socks" could be a subject for tonight's panel, Graham Norton, Paul Merton, Gyles Brandreth and Jenny Eclair, as they strive to fill their 60 seconds.

Jenny Eclair interview

Speaking to Jenny Eclair feels like I'm talking to a cool aunty.

Al Murray's Multiple Personality Disorder is another sketch show to add to the pile; this one less interested in being knowingly hip or an intentional cult, and more a throwback to the mainstream Harry Enfield days of the early-'90s.

Al Murray thankfully rests his increasingly tiresome Pub Landlord persona, and instead gives us a confection of colourful characters. Hit-and-miss is always the phrase applies to sketch comedy, and so it comes to be used here. Murray is an amusing fellow, and there's good support from comedians Simon Brodkin and Jenny Eclair - but only a few sketches stuck in my mind: a married couple who converse in radio advert lingo, dastardly gentleman thief Barrington Blowtorch, and some politically-correct policemen. Worryingly, half the sketches were very thin, obvious or dumb (like a Geordie pretending to be gay to perv on his sexy friend, or a baby in a high-powered business meeting), while a character called Herr Schull (a gay Nazi in pink uniform) was a rather uncomfortable and vaguely homophobic caricature I thought we left behind in the '70s with Benny Hill.

If the runaway success of The Pub Landlord gave you the impression that Al Murray was a one-trick pony, in his new sketch show he proves he can get laughs playing people with hair, too.

Often these series shove all their best sketches into the first episode then taper off in the following weeks. The opening sketch of Murray's series about a sex-mad West Country dad, however, is probably the weakest of the lot.

Fortunately, after starting out on a bum note, things can - and do - only get better. Highlights include Murray and Jenny Eclair cast as a married couple who do voice-overs and comedian Simon Brodkin, who appears in many of the sketches, brings his own creation along to the party, footballer Jason Bents.

Elsewhere, the spirit of Benny Hill lives on in Murray's gay Nazi, while at the other end of the scale we have the PC PCs - an obvious gag that's been waiting in the wings for yonks. "We know you're in there but more importantly we know that you had a very unhappy childhood..."

Al Murray dispenses with his stupendous Pub Landlord incarnation in favour of an ensemble sketch piece that, like his TV career to date, is a bit hit and miss. It's memorable mostly for being loud, colourful and a bit filthy... but then Murray is never a mand to tend towards subtlety. Jenny Eclair and Kevin Bishop gamely join him in the fun.