Jeremy Clarkson

Charles Kennedy saluted in Have I Got News For You

Guest host Jack Dee introduces vintage clips of the politician's best moments, including him out-quipping Jeremy Clarkson.

Peter Kay's Car Share, BBC One, review: 'very funny'

Peter Kay's Car Share (BBC One) was the Beeb's first motoring-based programme since Top Gear-gate. Fortunately for a sitcom, it was very funny and full of gentle charm. The opposite of Jeremy Clarkson at a cold buffet, in fact.

While not as laugh-a-minute as the first series of W1A, the new offering again crackled with good lines, from the pen (and now direction) of John Morton, who also tackled the monster that was the London Olympics in 2012, in a comedy of the same name. He likes a challenge.

Has he thought about the EU, and Brussels? That may be a farce too far. According to Morton's script his royal highness "needs a three-day lockdown on his loo".

As one person said in the meeting, "that's a little too much information".

The strength of this series is to mix what we assume happens within the BBC, with what actually does go on in the daft world of TV. "The Frankie Howerd room"? In the end, we don't have a clue as to where the truth lies.

If a quarter of what happens within those meetings is close to reality, it explains what we sometimes see on the screen.

It's good comedy, yes, but it does make you wonder, which we hope is the whole idea. Or is it simply a weekly video for BBC staffers to watch and reflect upon? For example, there was talk in the show of a new role as "Director of Better".

We laugh, but it might not be too far from reality either. What it does show is an organisation easily parodied for being obsessed with image. The BBC is not alone in that, but we do hope that coming up with decent programme ideas then making them is the real focus.

There was a funny storyline about Jeremy Clarkson. His surname was bleeped out, as someone was "tasked" with counting up the number of times he had said the word "tosser" in the past four years on Top Gear. Alas, the hapless "oh, cool, yeah" intern Will was given the job. If only he'd been given the task of sorting out the real-life Clarkson case.

The hour-long format did the show no favours. For example, there was a little too much from Perfect Curve, who are now genuinely the "world's most annoying PR agency". That aside, solid performances from the likes of Hugh Bonneville and Jessica Hynes have ironically made this one of the best comedy series on the BBC in recent years. One thing is sure, though, viewers will quietly desert the show before John Morton runs out of material.

This is the episode in which Jeremy Clarkson was set to return fire on his erstwhile employers. It looks as if he's decided that discretion is the better part of valour, but with the election now only a fortnight away, whoever is invited along instead - it'll be Alexander Armstrong, won't it? [actually Stephen Mangan] - will have plenty to talk about. In JC's absence, Miles Jupp and Camilla Long will be picking up the slack alongside Merton and Hislop, who must have been hoping for some sort of Angus Deayton-style valedictory humiliation.

W1A review: 'nibbling, not biting, satire'

The problem with W1A is that reality is funnier than spoof - just look at Jeremy Clarkson. And the annoying language really is annoying.

The BBC has a problem. It's in danger of losing the Wimbledon rights to a rival broadcaster. On top of that it's considered that the tournament is too staid, white and elitist.

Enter PR extraordinaire Siobhan Sharpe, who is tasked with the job of making Wimbledon cool and 'ethnically, not so much white'.

It was just one of the corporation's dilemmas witnessed in W1A (BBC Two), which returned for a new series with an hour-long special. It's the mock-umentary that mercilessly lampoons the Beeb in all its politically correct, management-speak glory.

Just like most of the employees Siobhan (played by the brilliant Jessica Hynes) communicates in meaningless, corporate parlance. 'Yah. Totally. Epic,' is her favourite soundbite. Her solution to the Wimbledon issue was to 'mash it up and pimp it' by calling it Win-bledon, getting people like Alan Sugar and David Attenborough to act as umpires while members of the crowd chant and wave giant foam fingers.

Meanwhile hapless Entertainment Format Executive David Wilkes is desperate to come up with a new family-viewing show following the spectacular failure of Britain's Top Village.

His suggestion is Heavy Petting, a reality show were celebrities swap pets. Alternatively there's Britain's Top Family, where a family of toffs and a family of chavs fight it out to decide who is better.

'That's what ITV is for,' snapped Anna Rampton, the steely, charmless Head of Output. She had a point. I bet I wasn't the only person imagining ITV executives watching last night, pen and paper in hand, furiously scribbling notes.

Jeremy Clarkson's endless gaffes must be manna from heaven for writer and director John Morton. Last night Head of Values Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) was investigating the number of times Clarkson (whose name was bleeped out) said the word 't*****' following viewer's complaints.

Posh, clueless intern Will had to sit through four years' worth of Top Gear counting the number of times the word was uttered -- and, naturally, he messed that up as well.

Amid all that, the BBC was preparing for a visit from Prince Charles to congratulate them on becoming the first 'zero energy broadcaster'.

The BBC's bungling Head of Security, who bragged about his 'foolproof zonal lock-down system', was as competent as Mr Bean, while producer Lucy Freeman was chosen to greet HRH for no other reason than the fact she was non-white.

Last night's opener was witty, wordy and frantic with David Tennant's voiceover hitting the mark perfectly. At times it felt like too much was being crammed in, leaving the viewer almost breathless by the end.

You have to credit the BBC for allowing its operation to be ripped apart so savagely. Everybody had a daft title, nobody knew what they were doing and all were too afraid to do their job for fear of upsetting somebody else.

If the bumbling buffoons of W1A are even halfway accurate then it's little wonder all the political parties are promising to either reduce or freeze the licence fee!

TV preview: W1A, BBC2

Too many tossers on Top Gear? Not much of a surprise there. The first episode of the new series of W1A finds itself in a veritable art-imitating-life scenario when they have to do a damage limitation exercise on Jeremy Clarkson's latest fictional outburst, which involves trawling through old TG episode and counting up the times he has said "tosser".

Newzoids is, of course, a curate's egg. As was Spitting Image when it started, so put away those rosy rear-view spectacles. The CGI'd mouths are at the start disconcerting, but the obvious puppetry of the... arm-Zimmers?... reassuring, and the voices, from Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson, terrific. Things to love: Mrs Crown's Boys, which sees Queenie as a foul-mouthed matriarch; Chas and Camilla reimagined as the "posh" Gogglebox pair; the ghastlily "common" Prince George. In fact anything that rips the jack out of royalty and deference, and any sketch involving Jeremy Clarkson or Russell Brand, just because their time has belatedly come for a fine and decent kicking.

Things to hate: the cliches. Andy Murray has a boring voice. Dave Cameron is posh. The writers need to sharpen the political satire, but I'm lost for precisely how: it was either a masterstroke to launch this in an election runup or a catastrophic idea to think one could out-imagine politicians' own gift for self-parody. And we more than ever need the oinks of "Her Majesty's press". Give it time. We gave Spitting Image 18 series.

As is always the way with sketch shows like Newzoids there were some hits and misses but on the whole there were more of the former than the latter. The highlights of episode one were North Korean light entertainment vehicle 'The Un Show' and a very funny sketch involving Andy Murray's wedding night. One thing I appreciated about Newzoids was the fact that it was written quite close to transmission so that the majority of the skits felt topical. At the same time this sometimes felt like more than hindrance than a help with the writing team picking a story then trying to work a joke around it. A prime example of this was the use of Nigel Farage's controversial comments at the leaders' debate which the writers turned into a stand-up comedy routine. This felt like an incredibly ill-judged sketch that wasn't as cutting edge as the writers thought it would be and instead it just felt a bit crass. I don't think Newzoids will have the same impact as Spitting Image partly because of the fact that it's going out at 9pm on Wednesday night. Whilst Spitting Image had somewhat of a cult appeal, Newzoids appears to be going for a more mainstream audience which is exemplified by the focus on the Jeremy Clarkson firing from a couple of weeks' ago. The attacks on the three main party leaders also felt a little tame with Ed Milliband's failure to eat a bacon sandwich and Nick Clegg's claims of abuse being two more examples of weak sketches. But I'm going to give Newzoids the benefit of the doubt for now as it must be hard to write a show of this nature and there were some sketches that gave me hope that Newzoids could at least turn into something that would be worth checking out on a weekly basis.