Jo Brand

Is Room 101 three times better now there are three celebrities involved? The anecdotes have certainly suffered from a lack of breathing room, but at least that means there's a bit less credence given to predictable, fusty middle-England gripes, such as BBC Breakfast's Bill Turnbull banging on about youths wearing their jeans below their arses. Then again, Jo Brand is supposed to provide the comedic cutting edge tonight, but uses the opportunity to tell us that she doesn't like high heels. Who knew?

Taking a break from hunting killers under the scorching sun in Death In Paradise, actor/comedian Ben Miller lets off steam in Frank Skinner's lair.

What gets the persuasive Miller hot under the collar are shoelaces, homeopathy - which, to his scientific mind, is quite simply rubbish - and pedestrians who don't know how to behave on a pavement.

Splash! judge Jo Brand's high-heeled shoes and BBC 1's Breakfast host Bill Turnbull's low-slung jeans haven't got a prayer.

Ben Miller may have studied for a doctorate in quantum physics at Cambridge, but the man can't tie his own shoelaces. Or rather, he can't tie a bow, so he's devised his own way of tying them - and consequently makes a bid to have laces themselves condemned for ever to Room 101. It seems drastic, but that's the nature of the show, and at least Miller's gripes are idiosyncratic, whereas Bill Turnbull gets cheers from the audience for such regulation bugbears as low-slung jeans and people who hog the middle lane on motorways.

Jo Brand, meanwhile, has it in for high-heeled shoes, which gives the production the excuse to show us a clip of a very bizarre race.

George Orwell has provided TV producers with plenty of concepts; but we can only hazard a guess at what he would have thought of them. In this panel show, based on the idea of a room in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four where prisoners are subjected to their worst fears, guests must discuss their pet peeves with host Frank Skinner and compete for his approval to banish them to Room 101. Tonight's guests are BBC presenter Bill Turnbull, who hates low slung jeans and people who hog the middle lane on the motorway, comedian Ben Miller who can't abide homoeopathy, and comedian Jo Brand, who thinks personalised number plates and high-heeled shoes should make the cut.

Funny Business, narrated by Radio 4 newsman Eddie Mair, showed us what comedians were doing when they weren't monopolising television - to wit selling their souls at lucrative corporate dinners. Here was the menu - half an hour of Michael McIntyre for £40,000, Ricky Gervais for £25,000. Lesser lights got less, but how could you resist? You were right there in the shop window prostituting your art. One lavish event, the Real Variety Show, with its audience of hardnosed business types, could land you 30 other corporate gigs. Jo Brand and Arthur Smith bared their shame but took the money. Everyone had experience of being ignored on stage. Rhod Gilbert was visibly distressed as he relived the night he found himself talking to the back of Sir Alex Ferguson's head at a footballers' beano in Mayfair.

It was revealing but long-winded, and I found myself wondering how much Eddie Mair was getting paid as we drifted into the overvisited realm of vintage advertising with its (yawn) clips of Fry and Laurie selling cigars and John Cleese being zany in the service of Schweppes. "Wherever you look now, money's spoiled it," said Cleese from his Monte Carlo apartment.

'We've all become Thatcher's children,' reckons jobbing comic Hal Cruttenden, who merrily makes something like two grand a gig on the corporate circuit. Mark Thomas, naturally, begs to differ. And that's the beauty of this opening episode of a three-part documentary: it takes a very timely look at the business of comedy - bigger than it's ever been, surely - from all sides. It's also very funny, especially when established comedians, who undoubtedly deserve credit for even discussing the issue, grapple with their consciences as they explain themselves for doing what some might regard as selling out. A corporate gig is good practice for working a tough audience, says Jo Brand; doing adverts (or 'content-driven engagement platforms', as one suit now calls them) buys writing time, protests John Cleese; Rhod Gilbert, meanwhile, has bailed out of them altogether, his nerves and self-image unable to take it any more. The astronomical fees may simply reflect supply and demand, but it doesn't make the reality any more edifying. Engrossing, nonetheless.

In Funny Business (BBC2), the first of a series, Eddie Mair narrated an investigation into the ways in which standup comedians can make big money, none of which is by telling jokes in comedy clubs.

Appearing in adverts is one way, but many comics find selling stuff on TV to be inconsistent with either their morals or their sense of humour. Not that many, actually. Less objectionable is the corporate gig. You're just doing your act, albeit in front of a room full of company managers for an obscene amount of money. Ricky Gervais gets £25,000 for a 20-minute corporate set. Michael McIntyre gets £40,000. It's not surprising that up-and-coming comedians on corporate booker Jeremy Lee's roster fall over themselves to appear in his annual Real Variety Show, essentially a huge audition for an audience of events company managers. Again, it's just a gig, you end your set with the punchline: "I'm available for bookings, and I also host!"

A lot of comedians won't touch corporate gigs either, but not necessarily for the reason you might think. "I doubt there's one comedian in the world," said Arthur Smith, "who hasn't died on his or her arse at a corporate gig."

Jo Brand finds them bracing - "If you do corporates, you get the message that not everyone loves you," she says - but Rhod Gilbert still gets heart palpitations just driving by the venues of old corporate failures. It may be filthy lucre, but it doesn't sound like easy money.

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.