Katherine Kelly

Katherine Kelly: Playing Kenny Everett's wife was wild

Actress Katherine Kelly was well prepared to play Kenny Everett's wild-child wife Lee Middleton in her latest TV role - after meeting her during the filming.

The Marriage Ref is perplexingly bad. Couples arrive with a problem that is either banal (she won't tidy her room) or manufactured (he won't stop doing magic tricks), Jimmy Carr and Jack Dee try to be funny and Katherine Kelly makes inane side-chat, having signed one of those standard TV contracts in which a woman is required to be exactly as boring as her male counterpart is funny. Dermot O'Leary I can understand, he has the clean features for such mid-evening blather, Carr has always struck me as a man who would sell an organ if the price was right, but Dee? How broke can he be? Is he trying to set up an orphanage? What's going on?

Following on from a successful pilot last year, Justin Moorhouse returns in this sitcom playing an alternative version of himself, as a Manchester radio DJ recovering from a messy divorce.

This was a rather enjoyable half-hour, which began and closed with Justin talking to his mother (Anne Reid), who was horrified about Justin bringing him ginger nuts rather than Duchy Originals, and who has an attraction towards men with moustaches, including Bob Carolgees and Adolf Hitler.

The main plot of the first episode was Justin having to attend a gathering of parents at a restaurant with his ex-wife Tanya (Sally Lindsay) to try and get their son into a Catholic school, while at the same time going on a date with new love interest Lisa (Katherine Kelly) in the same restaurant.

The main lynchpin of comedy in this episode was the headmaster of the Catholic school, an Irish priest who was very traditional in his views. For example, he's against divorce, so Justin and Tanya have to pretend to be married. Now, the other week I came across an article on The Guardian's website from a man complaining that comedians are lazy when making jokes about religion. In terms of this show - while it is a bit lazy for making the Catholic priest Irish - there was no mention of paedophilia at all, and only one mention of homophobia.

Also, speaking as someone who went to Catholic school, I know that most Catholic priests are decent, well meaning people. R.E. teachers, on the other hand, are despicable monsters who still give me nightmares, and speaking from my own experiences are not exactly fair and balanced when covering certain topics. (The day when the pro-life campaigners came to our class and presented a slide show featuring graphic pictures of aborted foetuses springs to mind). This has nothing really to do with reviewing this show; it's just something I've always wanted to get off my chest.

Anyway, getting back to the main point, I think that Everyone Quite Likes Justin is worthwhile and entertaining sitcom which fully deserves the series that it has been given. Let's see what Moorhouse has to offer us as the series progresses.

Television at this time of year is a bit like my lawn at this time of year - patchy, barren, brown, cracked; you get the idea. Weekends are especially desperate. If you don't like sport, you're screwed - lost in a parched desert of nothingness (as opposed to one of those deserts that are full of stuff). Hell, you may even have to drag your fat arse off the sofa and do something different - go and water the garden, perhaps. Sprinkler - it's a nice word isn't it? It has some lovely consonant clusters.

What's this, then? Odd One In (ITV1, Saturday): yet another new gameshow. I see, so of these four nuns, only one is a real nun, and the teams - Peter Andre and Jason Manford v Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Katherine Kelly off Corrie - have to guess which one. Same with the guys with the beard; three are real beards, one is a fake. Which one, though?

So it's basically the odd one out round from Never Mind the Buzzcocks stretched into a whole programme. Hmmm. Oh, and made a lot more rubbish, because Bradley Walsh is no Simon Amstell; and Pete, Laurence etc are nothing like the funny people they have on NMTB. I predict a short life.

Well, we said it was light entertainment silly season. First in a double bill of new gameshows is this, hosted by Bradley Walsh. The "Home Team" of professional nice guy Peter Andre and likeable One Show recruit Jason Manford, plus an "Away Team" of two guest celebrities (first up are Coronation Street's Katherine Kelly and daytime dandy Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen), try to pick the person with a skill or secret out of a line-up by asking probing questions.