Lee Mack

Lee Mack interview

We chat to comedian Lee Mack about his new book, Mack The Life, Not Going Out, and writing comedy..

Lee Mack's top five comedians

When Lee Mack selects his five favourite comedians ever, it's worth taking note.

Degree honour for Lee Mack

Lee Mack is to be awarded an honorary doctorate by his former university.

Lee Mack vows not to swear at jubilee concert

Lee Mack is "terrified" about compering the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert.

This week the show it features not one, but two, token women!

Josie Lawrence and Sarah Millican join host Rob Brydon and team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell to help sort fact from fiction.

Also in tonight's episode we hear about the evil eye expression Huw Edwards employs during interviews.

And former Corrie star, game-show host and corpser extraordinaire Bradley Walsh fails miserably to maintain a poker face tonight.

His story - involving the theft of some mashed potato - will be submitted to the show's usual ruthless scrutiny, cross-interrogation and lightning wit.

"Talk about the Euro and do it with some level of insight!" demands David Mitchell of Lee Mack, in that pretend-outraged voice he uses a lot on this show. Mack gets his own back by demanding that Mitchell talk about last year's Carling Cup final. Neither of them can oblige, of course, but that's not the point: they're putting to the test the idea that Huw Edwards has an "evil eye" expression he uses to cut colleagues short in a studio discussion if they're going on too long. Edwards scowls a lot to demonstrate.

Sarah Millican, Josie Lawrence and Bradley Walsh are the other guests, with Walsh enjoyably corpsing as he tries to pretend he once stole mashed potato from his teachers.

A welcome return for the panel show hosted by Charlie Brooker that looks for the worst in everything and spins it into comedy gold. For example - your ideas, please, for the most appalling concept album? I'll leave you to insert your own ideas there and introduce the panellists: reliable Lee Mack; rising Scottish comic Susan Calman (a News Quiz regular); and the "who he?", Daniel Maier (answer: a writer on Harry Hill's TV Burp, so no slouch when it comes to gags).

You'll laugh your socks off - and future episodes are also worth catching, with guests including "the Legend" Barry Cryer, Graham Linehan (Father Ted) and Isy Suttie, doleful Dobby from Peep Show.

There's no point looking to Not Going Out for bold surprises or multi-layered comic finesse. What it delivers are sharp, uncomplicated laughs, laced with a good-natured smuttiness perfect for Friday nights.

And the key words in that sentence are "it delivers". If you don't like one gag, there'll be another along momentarily, probably also revolving around misunderstandings or double meanings. Hence tonight, Lee (Lee Mack) is concerned about his nether regions, and Lucy is keen for him to examine himself properly. "Do you ever check yourself, er... downstairs?" she enquires daintily, to which Lee replies, "Yeah - until the woman downstairs tells me to get out."

It is, Lee explains "not the bratwurst but the brussels sprouts" that are causing concern, which leads to a lovely series of scenes with friend Tim as they try to establish the size sprouts should in fact be.

Prepare to be buried in a torrent of smut when Lee takes up Lucy's challenge to join a fun run. It sounds an unlikely source for a welter of mucky gags, but when Lee (Lee Mack) pulls a muscle during a half-hearted attempt at training, and when he hires a Polish masseuse to help, only he doesn't realise she's that kind of masseuse, we are pitched into Carry On type misunderstandings.

Before we know it, Lee and Tim have been arrested for kerb-crawling and end up in a brothel. Of course it doesn't matter that they are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing; it can't stop a flow of jokes that would make Roy Chubby Brown reach for a lace handkerchief.