Keith Allen

Instead of one evening going pear-shaped, our Stockport lads have a whole weekend away to mess up in this larky comedy drama. Triggered by Kath's desire to escape her job, the chaos begins when she and Hodge decide to head off for a glamping trip. But with Beggsy playing gooseberry in his mam's house as she gets lovey-dovey, the pair might soon have a cuckoo in their romantic camper van. Phil Cornwell and Keith Allen guest star alongside regulars Craig Parkinson and Stephen Walters.

Tonight, on top of the increasingly good main cast, we get a gift-box of guest stars: Keith Allen, Kevin Eldon and Phil Cornwell all drop by - enough comic talent to power a series on their own. Allen plays a mad comedy farmer (with shotgun and ukulele) in whose field our bunch of friends go to camp. And as his saucy daughter, it's a barely recognisable Sophia Di Martino (Polly from Casualty). She coaxes Beggsy into an assignation in the hay-barn that could be a mistake.

Meanwhile, Glyn is on a promise with Julie, which in this sort of show means everything that can go wrong, will. It's lovably silly, knockabout farce and it puts a smile on your face.

The penultimate slice of this patchy comedy-drama about a quartet of men in their mid-thirties who meet for a weekly booze-up in Stockport. Hodge (Lee Boardman) and his wife Kath (Rebekah Staton) head off for a romantic weekend away that turns out to be anything but. On-off girlfriend Colleen's frisky new ways throw neurotic Daz (Stephen Walters) into a crisis but divorcé Beggsy (Will Ash) fares rather better in the romance stakes as he finally begins to enjoy the spoils of single life. Keith Allen guest stars.

Is politics the new comedy?

Much as I am loathe to cannibalise one of my own columns just three weeks in, I wanted to revisit my musings on political comedy that I made in my first column. I would feel a bit remiss in not reporting back that the first night of The Establishment, the revival of Peter Cook's satire soiree, was not the peek into the future of political comedy that the organisers (including host Keith Allen) might have hoped for. The reasons for this were various.

The Establishment club - review

Keith Allen and the Establishment club are here to save us from bland comedy and some other stuff too, apparently. Hogwash. Fun show though.

Keith Allen: Charlie Brooker produces vacuous nonsense

Maverick actor Keith Allen has hit out at journalist and broadcaster Charlie Brooker in this week's Radio Times, branding the latter's work "vacuous nonsense".

Though The News Quiz is one of Radio 4's most loved programmes, it's hard for me to write about. It goes out on a Friday night, after my column deadline, and - obviously - it's topical. I can only review the previous show, in this case the first in the new series, which discussed the Labour party conference, the EDF energy company and Sarah Palin. See: they're so last week! (Apart from Sarah Palin.)

The other block to me reviewing The News Quiz is, well, me. Though I am a Radio 4 devotee, its panel shows drive me mad. They're so cosy! The combination of laugh-at-anything audience and aren't-I-clever contestants creates a tittering dinner party atmosphere that makes me yearn for Jerry Sadowitz or Keith Allen or Joan Rivers. In short, I want anger.

Still, there's enough of that in today's Britain, eh? And anyway, The News Quiz has Jeremy Hardy, whose anger is there, just clothed in exquisite one-liners, and he usually keeps me listening. Hardy has a gentle bedside manner which hides his vicious shanking of the pompous establishment. Last Friday he managed to stick it to middle-class parents, banks, the government and Barack Obama within the first 10 minutes. 'Obama said that the collapse of the banks is no time for politics. No, Christmas dinner is no time for politics.' But the bit I really liked was when he had a pop at Sue Perkins over her appearance on Maestro. What that says about me, I hate to think.