Johnny Vegas

Audio: Johnny Vegas - my dad ate my rabbit

One of comedian Johnny Vegas's most well known jokes is about how his dad put his pet rabbit into the pot and then ate it. While most saw this as just a joke, Vegas now admits that the joke is based on a true story.

Video: Johnny Vegas presents the weather

Johnny Vegas, who is in Nottingham as part of the city's comedy festival (24 September - 4 October), apparently has harboured a secret ambition to be a weather presenter. In true Jim'll Fix It style BBC East Midlands Today's Sally Pepper guided him through the job.

It's a queer cove of a show, this. The action never staggers far from the hovel of hash 'n' weed seller Moz (Johnny Vegas), so there's no variation of location - and often, his stoner customers simply take turns to arrive, act funny for a bit and leave, so there's not much story to grab onto. Losing your concentration would be forgivable and, perhaps, appropriate. But the eclectic supporting cast are worth staying awake for. This episode offers a hilarious pop duo - berks in leotards and Phil Oakey hairdos - and Sean Lock, who straps on his breasts again as dour transsexual Natalie. Most excitingly, Moz's new neighbour is played by Janeane Garofalo, once a star of The Larry Sanders Show.

Johnny Vegas makes return to Gilded Balloon

Johnny Vegas is joining a host of celebrities for three special shows at Edinburgh's Gilded Balloon.

Ideal, the tale of shut-in drug dealer Moz (Johnny Vegas) began its sixth series last night with Moz apparently being decapitated by PC Phil. From there, things unfolded with their usual skill, with Vegas's beautiful, idiosyncratic brand of melancholic comedy infusing everything. It now comes with added Sean Lock - as Brian's ex- and now transgendered wife. Rich, dark and satisfying as best plum cake.

With a plot line that's bound to be nicked by CSI if they haven't already used it - a cunning twister involving a beheading that turns out to be a case of mistaken identity - Ideal (BBC3) returned for a stoned-out-of-its-brain sixth series. Who'd have thought there'd be so much mileage in Johnny Vegas as a deadbeat drug dealer?

It probably helps if you're under some kind of influence in order to stomach scenes where Vegas gets pleasured, but once you've drifted into Ideal's alternative world of bong, it offers a smorgasbord of surreal pleasures, not least answering the troubling conundrum of what Sean Lock would look like if he sported a pair of fake breasts. Well, it had troubled me.

Johnny Vegas plotting new show?

Johnny Vegas has revealed he has spent three years venting his hatred into writing a new comedy show.

Hannah Hobley leaves Benidorm

Hannah Hobley has left ITV1's award-winning sitcom Benidorm. Her character Chantelle Garvey disappeared into the sunset with her boyfriend, played by Johnny Vegas, at the end of series three. And the 21 year-old has now confirmed she will not return for the fourth series.

Johnny Vegas axed from Benidorm

Johnny Vegas has been axed from ITV1 sitcom Benidorm - as bosses draft in sexy new characters for series four. Other characters leaving the show are Martin and Kate Weedon, played by Nicholas Burns and Abigail Cruttenden.

How very British, how very self-deprecating, to name a TV series QI, meaning "quite interesting". It's a "comedy panel quiz show" hosted by the ubiquitous Stephen Fry which, in Britain, started out modestly on one of the BBC's smaller channels and has since moved to BBC One.

It's not hard to see its appeal in that country, with the combination of Fry and comedian Alan Davies, plus a revolving selection of guests. The first episode on Prime on Sunday night was, well, quite interesting. The theme was Fight or Flight, with Fry asking questions to which the panellists were expected to deliver interesting answers, if not necessarily the right ones. Why were Spitfires painted pink? What's the opposite of a flying fish? When lions fight bears, which animal wins?

The guests' efforts to deliver answers were generally nonsense, and Johnny Vegas' accent was so thick it was hard to hear what he was saying - the audience thought he was hilarious - but the answers were quite interesting and poet Pam Ayres won. The scoring system was a complete mystery but any TV which increases general knowledge has got to be a treat these days.