Lee Mack

Radio Times review

Before I started watching this I thought, "I wonder if they'll add some sleigh bells over the thrashy theme music" and I'm delighted to say they have. There's also a spangly snowflake backdrop and several Christmas-themed claims/tales/festive fibs.

To wit, "These are two of the best gifts I was given last Christmas," announces David Mitchell, flourishing a top hat and magic wand and prompting all of us to try to picture what Christmas Day might be like at the Coren Mitchells.

But the best prop arrives when Bill Bailey introduces a pet bird called Jacob, that he claims he once smuggled into the cinema with him. The fact it's a cockatoo is heroically ignored, even by Lee Mack: no pre-watershed-unfriendly gags here (although why Mitchell's enthusiastic mime of church bell-ringing gets a laugh might take some explaining). Kelly Holmes, Jo Brand and Ruth Jones add to the mendacious merriment.

Radio Times review

And you thought Not Going Out ended for good last Christmas when hopeless slacker Lee actually did the right thing for once and married the long-suffering Lucy.

But no, everyone is back for a special episode with a festive theme. A year on from the wedding and Lucy (Sally Bretton) is heavily pregnant, three days overdue with her and Lee's first baby. But the poor woman can't simply put her feet up and await the birth, she and Lee (Lee Mack) are embroiled in a hold-up at a department store. Their captor is Father Christmas himself.

All of the regulars return, including the estimable Katy Wix as dopey Daisy, and the gag count is as high as ever.

Lee Mack's fact-checking panel show - a kind of GCSE version of QI - returns for a third series, continuing its ongoing quest to verify all manner of urban mythology. Tonight's series opener invites Jerry Springer, Emma Bunton and Jason Byrne to the Duck pod, each armed with a pet fact to be tested to quacking point. After proving to the world that dog urine glows under ultraviolet light and that toilets tend to flush in E flat, it seems that no scientific theory is safe.

Radio Times review

No sooner has she left The One Show sofa, the ubiquitous Alex Jones is back, this time on the panel show in which participants attempt to hoodwink their opponents with absurd facts and plausible lies about themselves. It's all in good fun, and host Rob Brydon and team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack know how to squeeze the maximum amount of laughter from each absurd suggestion. Comedy actor Greg Davies, performance poet John Cooper Clarke and TV presenter Rick Edwards are also along for the ride in this edition.

Radio Times review

Last week it was judo, this week netball is the sport at which Lee Mack must feign competence, claiming to have been made captain of his (or possibly his wife's) netball team. Could he be pulling off an elaborate double bluff of the kind you occasionally get on this programme, where someone's flailing inability to sound plausible is really a smokescreen to cover the fact they're telling the truth?

Fans of the show will be glad to learn that Bob Mortimer is on Lee's team. Nobody unhitches the game from its moorings so brilliantly, this time with tales of a childhood game he claims to have played called Theft and Shrubbery. Also tonight: three different impressions of Alan Hansen.

Edinburgh Fringe interview: Steve Hall

The best-educated third of beloved Fringe losers We Are Klang, and one of the main writers on Russell Howard's Good News, Hall has opened for Russell Howard and Lee Mack on tour, and was the first ever stand-up guest on Good News.

Fringe Q&As: Lloyd Griffith

Lloyd Griffith discusses cheap beer, Lee Mack jokes and being Grimsby's most talented export.

Lee Mack interview

Comedian Lee Mack talks class, late fatherhood - and what happened the first time he kissed a girl.

Video: Lee Mack on his on-screen marriage

At Christmas viewers of Not Going Out saw Lucy and Lee finally tie the knot in the season finale. So what's next for the couple?