Katy Brand

Thanks to Radio 4 Extra, listeners had an opportunity to hear the pilot episode of Miranda Hart's Joke Shop, first broadcast in May 2007, and also featuring Alison Steadman and Katy Brand.

This was amusing to hear but it was even obvious back then that Hart's wonderful visual humour - including her asides to the audience - meant she belonged on the small screen.

There are quite a few things to be said about this panel show pilot made for digital channel Dave. First of all, it's better than Compete for the Meat.

Hosted by Alexander Armstrong, the main hook of this show is that the panellists - in this case Robert Webb, Katy Brand and Griff Rhys Jones - have to come up with the questions and they score points if their opponents fail to get them right. It has already been described as QI without the researchers.

There were some interesting things that popped up during the course of the show, such as the fact that in Victorian times green dye contained arsenic, so people were being slowly killed by their wallpaper. Not all the questions were based on far-flung info through, as one round consisted of trying to come up with funny questions to ask famous people. There was one example by Webb towards Louis Spence which I won't repeat here, but I can tell you mentioned the f-word.

One aspect that grabbed my attention was Dave Lamb, who was in the show's "Fact Bunker" checking out all the answers, and who only appeared on a television inside the studio. The thing is, I reviewed his radio show last week, in which he played an agoraphobic conspiracy theorist, and now he's on a TV show with a studio audience, but not appearing in front of them in the flesh. Is this where he gets his ideas from?

In terms of intellectual comedy, I don't think you can top QI, but Big Ask is a decent attempt and is no doubt much cheaper, which is important to a digital channel facing competition from bigger broadcasters. On this show they don''need to spend money on researchers - instead they spend the money on electronic tablets for each of the panellists, because let's be fair it is a bit of bore just using your mouth.

Having said that, I still think that it was an entertaining pilot and I hope a full series comes out of it.

Review: Alexander Armstrong's Big Ask

The format is essentially Alexander Armstrong presents a topic to a panel of three comedians and the panel must take it in turn to ask interesting questions to the other two panellists. Got it? To be honest Katy Brand, Griff Rhys Jones and Robert Webb didn't really get it either at first.

Quiz show producers looking to make cuts: why not do away with researchers altogether? Alexander Armstrong invites Robert Webb, Katy Brand and Griff Rhys Jones to not only answer some QI-style questions, but to come up with their own questions too. As Webb, grabbing the hand that feeds and munching it like a corncob, says: "We all know where we are. This channel isn't called David." If the pilot doesn't grab your attention, the tossed-together studio set might: a derangement of union flag coffee table and skyline glimpsed through American chatshow blinds.

Like a more relaxed version of QI after sinking a couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio, this new panel show asks its guests not only to provide the answers, but also to dream up the questions themselves from various "random" topics.

The money they've saved on employing researchers to do this must have been spent on guests because Robert Webb, Katy Brand and Griff Rhys Jones all look very happy to plonk themselves on the comfy armchairs and trot out the bizarre facts they just happen to know about Brazil or Captain Cook.

The show also boasts Dave Lamb (the voice of Come Dine With Me), who is criminally underused here as the fact checker in an underground bunker.

Hosting knockabout comedy quizzes is a useful sideline for Alexander Armstrong. But despite being the most comfortable host of Have I Got News for You, he doesn't always strike gold (Best of the Worst, Don't Call Me Stupid). Maybe this quiz pilot will change his fortunes. Contestants (Robert Webb, Katy Brand and Griff Rhys Jones) gain points for devising a question that will flummox the others, while Dave (Come Dine with Me) Lamb chips in from the "Fact Bunker". It's more Reithian than the average panel show, but the best bits are the detours: Webb goading Armstrong with "I like it when you do your One Show voice", and Jones looking peeved with a low score for one of his jokes.

Only something special could nudge Victoria Wood out of stand-up exile, and this gig in aid of the British Heart Foundation is certainly a very good reason indeed. It may be a decade since she's performed as a stand-up, but you'd never guess, and she's as sharp as ever. For the other ladies on the bill, who include Jo Brand, Julia Davis, Katy Brand,
Isy Suttie, and Roisin Conaty, she's still quite an inspiration.

We must part with our celebration of female- fronted comedy, thanks to The Morgana Show, a witless sketch vehicle for newcomer Morgana Robinson. Why has she got her own show? Is it because her agent is the powerful John Noel, who numbers Russell Brand among his clients? I wonder.

Like the similarly charmless Katy Brand, Robinson's toothless parodies of the likes of Boris Johnson and Cheryl Cole are an apolitical affirmation of the celebrity status quo, not an attack on it. They lack the backbone required for anything other than staggeringly uninspired whimsy.

And when Dom Joly escapes from the jungle, someone should alert him to The Morgana Show's suspiciously familiar bellowing mobile phone businessman. Shameless stuff.

The Buzzcocks studio can handle most things, but can it handle the prattle-storm of Jedward? It's a close call. Seated side by side as one guest on Noel Fielding's team, they nearly capsize the show. At one stage even the benign Fielding has to abandon them and swap places with Phill Jupitus because he can't cope with their daft interruptions (many clearly edited out). "It's like a simpleton Bros!" he wails. Other descriptions of the pop twins include "A production of Oliver! styled by Vivienne Westwood" (from fellow guest Katy Brand) and "the greatest musical collaboration since Lennon met Chapman". That cruel offering comes from guest host Jack Dee's autocue. He's just the man for the occasion: for much of the show, it's essentially Jack Dee versus Jedward - and cryingly funny.

Planet Jedward takes over the Buzzcocks studio tonight - a surreal experience that's as painful to watch as it is snortingly hilarious.

Jack Dee is the host as the pair, the type of act that could have been invented just for this show to ridicule, join Noel ­Fielding's team.

Despite prattling on 10 times as much as one normal person, John and Edward only count as one guest. Perhaps this was decided by a tally of their IQs, or, as team captain Phill Jupitus puts it: "You make Dappy from N-Dubz look like Stephen Fry."

The twins' machine gun chatter would test the patience of a saint and Jack Dee - as you may have noticed - is no holy man, although some of his crueller put-downs have sadly been cut out. Also trying to get a word in edgeways tonight are Eliza Doolittle, Katy Brand and Charlie Higson.

Whichever poor soul was given the task of having to edit this deserves a month on a sun lounger in the Maldives, wearing earplugs and an eye mask.