Johnny Vegas

It was a bit rich of Jonathan Ross to call C4 "f***ing idiots" for cutting Steve Coogan short at The British Comedy Awards.

You were the host, Jonathan. Perhaps if you'd kept a tighter rein on the earlier ramblings - yes you, Will Ferrell - poor old Coogan would not have suffered such a gross invasion of his publicity.

By all accounts Coogan gave a pretty funny speech. So I guess if C4 had left it in it would have looked totally out of place on this show. The night opened with Rossy admitting "It's hard to know what makes good comedy" and ended with us in no doubt as to what does not.

No wonder so many people complained when the BBC cut short a repeat of Mrs Brown's Boys to announce Mandela's death. We're so starved of laughs these days we must protect the few we have.

The rant by Johnny Vegas detailing everything that is wrong about British comedy should be nailed to the wall of every TV office. Failing that, just nail it to Jack Whitehall. His face gets everywhere these days.

Video: British Comedy Awards interviews

Sara Shulman interviews Johnny Vegas, Steve Coogan, Jack Whitehall, Vicki Pepperdine, Joanna Scanlan, Tom Rosenthal and Ryan Sampson at The British Comedy Awards.

Radio Times review

QI loves to stray towards the saucepot at the best of times, let alone when the episode theme is "Kinky". So tonight's episode is not recommended for the prudish, covering as it does electrically assisted kissing, sex with pigeons and a boy who got a certain body part trapped between powerful magnets. And that's the stuff we can print.

At one point Fry uses super-saturated sodium acetate and exothermic nucleation (apparently) to make instant crystals into a rude shape, while Johnny Vegas sings the theme from The Snowman. It's one of the oddest sequences you'll see on television, ever. Also steering through the smut are Sandi Toksvig and Janet Street-Porter.

After buying a house with a tennis court attached, Jonathan Ross developed a love of the game that finds him knocking up with a comedy coterie including Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr and David Baddiel. Tips from a Wimbledon champion are quite another thing, though, and having predicted that Andy Murray would triumph earlier this year, Ross welcomes him to the sofa to relive his glories.

They're joined by Celine Dion, whose new studio album Loved Me Back To Life is her first big English-language release since 2007. Perhaps unfairly, neither Murray nor Dion are known for their comedy punchlines, so Johnny Vegas and John Barrowman will be bringing the funny.

Johnny Vegas: Here's Johnny... or is it Michael?

Without alcohol, Johnny Vegas was simply Michael Pennington, a quiet, gently witty guy with none of the unrelenting bravado of his acerbic alter ego.

Johnny Vegas on 'Ideal' axe: 'I was really cross'

Johnny Vegas has admitted that he was "really cross" when Ideal was axed.

Johnny Vegas: it's time to say goodbye to his alter-ego

His boozing, sharp-witted and crass alter-ego might have got him where he is today, but Michael Pennington, the man behind the mask, has finally revealed why it's time to say goodbye to Johnny Vegas.

Johnny Vegas on Johnny Vegas: 'I had no control'

The little-known Michael Pennington was born on September 11, 1972, but in the mid-1990s, kicking and screaming, he gave birth to Johnny Vegas.

Johnny Vegas needed two bottles of vodka for alter-ego

Michael Pennington, the man behind Britain's best loved slob Johnny Vegas, admits his comic creation is 'both a blessing and a curse'. At one stage he was drinking two bottles of vodka a day.