Jeremy Clarkson

Top 10 Have I Got News For You guest hosts

As Have I Got News For You celebrates ten years of guest hosts, we count down our top 10, from Alexander Armstrong and Damian Lewis to Jeremy Clarkson and Boris Johnson.

HIGNFY fans pan Jeremy Clarkson's guest presenting

Jeremy Clarkson guest presented this week's episode of BBC comedy Have I Got News For You - but it seems many fans were less than amused.

Switch is a comedy drama on a digital channel which has its work cut out. Mainly because it is on IIV2, which is quite possibly the worst TV channel in the country.

Switch is a supernatural comedy about a coven of four 20-something witches living in Camden. Each of the four witches, physiotherapist Grace (Phoebe Fox), travel loving Hannah (Hannah Tointon), fiery fashionista Jude (Nina Toussiant-White) and overworked Stella (Lacey Turner), each have their own problems - whether it is love, family relations or work - so not surprisingly they often end up using their magic to try and improve their lot, and more often than not it backfires.

In terms of laughs, it's somewhat thin on the ground. While the team behind the series have good experience with this kind of format (the show is made by the team who did Being Human), it all felt a bit thin. Part of the problem, I think, is that it's not in the right time slot. The target audience appears to be young women and girls, so why not make the show pre-watershed so that it could reach a bigger audience - and hopefully Switch would benefit from that.

The older actors, the authority figures in Switch, were the funniest - including Grace's old fashioned mother played by Caroline Quentin. There were also some good laughs from Stella's horrid boss Janet (Amanda Drew), who's placed under a spell to make her lose her short-term memory; but in the end makes her forget several decades. Good stuff.

There's one or two positive moments in Switch, but by and large it was a disappointment. That said, I think I'd recommend anyone reading this to watch Switch for two main reasons. Firstly (since just about everything else on the channel is rubbish), it's the best show currently on ITV2. By watching it, we might just encourage the executives at the network to buck up their ideas.

And secondly, as I mentioned before, the show is mostly targeted at young women. This is how Switch should be marketed. Forget the witches or merchandising. Just say that this is the show that could make Jeremy Clarkson's eyes bleed and you could well end up with a big hit.

MediaGuardian 100 2012 - 60. Graham Norton

He may have been overtaken as the BBC's highest earner by Jeremy Clarkson, but the chatshow host is on top of his game.

Ubiquitous Griff Rhys Jones hosts this new comedy panel show, in which players are challenged to give "a short history of everything else". If that sounds slightly vague, then it's appropriate for the programme's rather nebulous concept. Each week, team captains Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker and their guests watch varied clips of archive footage, and try to prove that they remember more about the stories behind the films than the other team. But they're really competing for points which are nonsensically allocated according to the drollness of their observations. The guests for this week's opener are broadcaster Kirsty Wark and comedian Micky Flanagan.

The show's real strength is the footage itself - the researchers have done a great job mining the archives to provide what Jones describes as "a serious nostalgia fest". Tonight there's vintage footage of Peter York discussing Sloane Rangers - "my goodness, don't they look lovely" - and a meringue pie being squished into Jeremy Clarkson's face. It may be yet another panel show, but this offbeat trip down memory lane extracts lots of humour from our social history.

We're hoping for fireworks tonight as Jeremy Clarkson takes the ­driver's seat once again.

After the fun that Private Eye had at Clarkson's expense over the injunction he imposed against his ex-wife, editor Ian Hislop will have been gleefully sharpening up his ad libs in readiness.

Clarkson can give as good as he gets, of course, and if they can get through the entire show without lawyers or paramedics having to be helicoptered in then frankly, it will be a bit of a disappointment.

Into this already heady mix Nancy Dell'Olio, who lumbered so ­entertainingly through her stint on Strictly Come Dancing, is thrown in for good measure.

This woman's shield of ­self-confidence is so strong the panel should be warned that any taunts they hurl at her are likely to bounce straight off and poke them in the eye.

Jeremy Clarkson is in the host's chair once again, always a gleeful prospect for anyone who enjoys watching him being needled by Ian Hislop. Remember when Clarkson threw his pen at Hislop, who'd had the temerity to cast doubt on Clarkson's authorship of his newspaper columns?

Their exchanges should be even more spicy, considering Private Eye's pursuit of Clarkson after he imposed a super-injunction on his ex-wife (a legal stricture Clarkson himself broke late last year).

Surely everyone will have some sport with guest Nancy Dell'Olio, a woman who has turned preening self-obsession into a profession.

The provenance of this episode is quite as interesting as anything Stephen Fry has on his cue cards. It was pulled from the schedules last December after Jeremy Clarkson, one of its guest panellists, made his much-derided comments about public sector strike action. The furore surrounding Clarkson has died down enough to show the episode (and to allow him to guest-host tonight's Have I Got News For You), and he joins Alan Davies, Ross Noble and Dara O'Briain to answer questions about idleness.

At the heart of BBC One's returning Friday night comedy block is the 43rd series of Have I Got News for You. Over the last 22 years the current affairs panel show has clocked up some improbable statistics: no fewer than 363 episodes transmitted, with Alexander Armstrong its most frequent guest host after 19 appearances in the chair. Tonight's show will be hosted by Stephen Mangan, alongside veteran team captains Ian Hislop (who has appeared in all 363 editions) and Paul Merton (a relative novice at just 355). Later in the series, we are promised debuts from new hosts such as former government spin doctor Alastair Campbell, as well as returns from motormouth Jeremy Clarkson and Homeland's Damian Lewis.

Video: Disabled comedian Francesca Martinez fears cuts

Actor Francesca Martinez took a swipe as Jeremy Clarkson as she claimed 500,000 people could lose disability benefits.

The comedian, who has cerebral palsy and appeared in Extras, warned "anyone could become disabled" and said public attitudes were hardening with increased hate crime against those with disabilities.

She then debated her film with Michael Portillo who claimed some people received disability benefits who were not entitled to them.