Johnny Vegas

Dave Gorman's guest tonight is a slimmed-down, healthy-looking Johnny Vegas, who is called upon to decide which ideas are pure genius and which are the product of unsound minds. One scheme is for so-called dating insurance: a couple puts money in a pot every week and, when they split up, the one who has been dumped gets the cash. Better still is the gentleman who has invented a box for the torture of inanimate objects. Why? "Because inanimate objects are so intensely annoying and there are very few ways you really get back at them." The most alarming moment is when Vegas gets into bed with Gorman to demonstrate a fully wrap-around duvet. Forces are unleashed that are very hard to control.

A Question of Royalty, the Afternoon Play, was a knockabout caper with top notes of topicality. "This could destabilise the whole country!" was an early line, on the day of the G20 protests. "The aristocrats go, the whole bloody lot collapses." And there was a nod to April Fool's gags, with a plotline about the Queen's marriage being invalid as it hadn't been properly officiated, "leaving all their offspring little bas ...", as light-fingered plasterer Bernie (Johnny Vegas) blurted out.

But mainly, Andrew Lynch's drama was concerned with timeless comedy dependables. Toffs versus "the lumpen proletariat", north versus south, skint versus affluent, true love versus a good marriage: these gave the play its structure and mood, and produced hilarious worlds-colliding moments.

Civil servants threw the might of the establishment at the plasterers, who had inadvertently stolen the royal marriage certificate ("you've admitted treason; we can hang you"), and Ricky Tomlinson, as the other bungling thief, tried to bribe them with goods of dodgy provenance ("we might even be able to get you some topsoil"). Every line from Tomlinson was gloriously delivered, and very funny.

Ricky Tomlinson and Johnny Vegas shine as two enterprising brothers, itinerant Liverpool plasterers, contracted onto a refurbishment job at the Public Records office, who stumble on a great State secret when they nick the Queen's marriage certificate. Andrew Lynch's comedy is full of sharp digs about "that nice royal butler we know", knowing insights into the sly life, close encounters with authority, quick glimpses of the difference between what a man really says to his wife and what he tells his mates. Funny, but a bit slow to get going.

Benidorm filming disrupted - Vegas gets gout

Comic Johnny Vegas has suffered another bout of gout while filming his hit series Benidorm. Production of the Costa del Sol sitcom was suspended last week after the 37-year-old star was struck down with the condition.

Creating comedy from controversy demands more than regulars Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound merely spouting near-nonsense loudly and provocatively. Still, the guests in this show, including Dara O'Briain, Johnny Vegas and Frankie Boyle, show how it's done.

Fifteen years ago, Reeves and Mortimer pulled the rug from under panel shows with a jerk that sent their legs in the air. All subsequent panel shows owe something to that Big Bang. Shooting Stars was juvenile, anarchic and fizzing with ricocheting invention. Matt Lucas in a pink romper suit looked as if he might at any moment burst out of his cocoon and become something huge and hungry. Which he did. Visiting celebrities took their lives in their hands. Larry Hagman looked like a man in a nightmare. Stephen Fry was lost in the wash. Johnny Vegas remembered Vic and Bob asking him, Are you drinking tonight? (a question with which he was all too familiar), and adding reassuringly, Because we are.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer first hosted their anarchic celebrity quiz show in 1993. The first of two programmes marking the show's 15th anniversary tonight is a documentary about the making of it - and, like Shooting Stars itself, the film is funny, eccentric and a little self-indulgent. Interspersed with interviews with some of the celebrities who found themselves subjected to Reeves' and Mortimer's particular kind of comedy (which veered from the surreal to the mildly offensive), the presenters themselves play various crew members reminiscing about their time working behind the scenes. This is a suitably unique way to contemplate a programme which Martine McCutcheon calls 'bizarre' and of which Larry Hagman said, "I've done some loony shows in my time but this is certainly the one."

Shooting Stars launched the career of Matt Lucas - who played scorekeeper George Dawes before he went on to global fame with David Walliams in Little Britain - and latterly also co-starred the often self-confessedly drunken comic Johnny Vegas.

Filing clerks Danny (Ralf Little) and Shay (Carl Rice) share a long cherished dream to run their own record company. Danny's gran dies, leaving him £10,000, and before she is cold in her grave they have set up Shady Music. Their first job is to recruit talent to the label and what better way than to hold a Battle of the Bands night?

All this occurs within the first ten minutes of Massive, cutting to the chase with commendable brevity. Nothing kills a new sitcom quicker than a wade through exposition in episode one.

And to its credit, Massive succeeds in keeping up a cracking pace for its full 30 minutes. We see the pair bicker over their musical tastes, strut around in their new capacity as entrepreneurs, rent rat-infested offices and stop at bus stops to ask Jim Morrison lookalikes if they can sing.

It's all very entertaining and good-natured, with several good moments. Little and Rice work well with each other, and Johnny Vegas is on hand to lend comic support as Shay's kleptomaniac dad. Actually, I think I may have seen a bit too much of Vegas lately, which is ironic since he's clearly lost a lot of weight.

Massive is another silly new sitcom with Johnny Vegas. He's moved from Benidorm to Manchester, but the level of comedy hasn't changed much - all gentle roguishness, mice, too much Strongbow, falling over and exaggerated facial expressions. There's an element of X Factor about it: we're setting up a new record label, and there's a battle-of-the-bands contest to get the operation up and running. But there's much more drama in the real X Factor, and more humour. The best thing in this is a pea-soup coloured Austin Allegro. Nice wheels.

In this hip new sitcom, Johnny Vegas plays a small-time crook called Tony. We first see him crawling into a bedroom, fingers outstretched for his slumbering son's wallet. Amusing as it is to watch Vegas squirm around on the floor, the role of hapless ne'er-do-well isn't exactly new to Manchester-based comedy... In this insalubrious flat, however, dreams can come true: the son awakes to find best mate Danny (Ralf Little) has inherited £10,000. The pair decide to set up a record label and everyone, from Tony's cider-swigging wife to the estate agent, wants to be signed. There's some great facial gymnastics from wannabe rapper Swing but, apart from that, this opening double bill doesn't quite hit the mark. Let's hope it's simply a question of fine-tuning.