Lee Mack

I really don't know what they're giving panellists before they go on this show.

The start of series five dissolves into a puddle of infectious hysteria that has more than one of the cast absolutely weeping with laughter.

I blame The Apprentice's Nick Hewer, who kicks off proceedings with a wonderfully straight-faced tale of how he and Lord Sugar like to relax after a tough day's filming in the boardroom.

He's a very welcome addition to the line-up, proving that you don't have to be a professional stand-up to get big laughs on this show.

Team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell are also joined this week by Jack Whitehall and Rebecca Front as well as Miranda Hart.

The latter is reduced to helpless tears of mirth by her own very unlikely sounding tale about trying out for QPR's women's football team. But it's host Rob Brydon's own demonstration of a cuddle jumper that really brings the house down.

While much of Would I Lie To You? would work almost as well on radio, the cuddle jumper is an item of clothing which absolutely must be seen to be fully enjoyed.

A perfect blend of innocent silliness and razor-sharp wit, Would I Lie To You? is still the perfect way to wind down for the weekend.

And this might just be the funniest episode ever.

The first Comedy Lab pilot is this sketch show starring Anna Crilly and Katy Wix, which also featured guest appearances from Lee Mack and Eamonn Holmes. While I wanted to avoid using the cliché of sketch shows being 'hit and miss', I though that this show was... well, you can guess.

One problem I have with this show is that the ideas appear to be limited. They had a bunch of sketches in the first half, and the characters and situations were just repeated in the second half. I certainly don't mind recurring characters in sketch shows over the course of a series, but, to me, repeating them in the same episode is rather lazy.

Sketches include a pair of women living in a flat owned by a goat, a German hospital soap opera with lots of fake slapping, and day time show Congratulation! in which the two women give a 'Congratulation' to people over the trivial things, and give the biggest congratulation by displaying their censored vaginas.

However, there were bits I liked. One of the characters was a nervous woman giving out awards at a village fete. While she, on the whole, was one of the weaker characters, the preposterous sight of a cake in the shape of a swastika did make laugh. Also there was Holmes's game show Pointer, a Weakest Link parody in which people hold out very stiff arms and point out who they want eliminating. Then there were the women who were obsessed with measuring anything, including the distance their uncle had to be from a primary school.

This show does have potential. All they need to do is sort out the wheat from the chaff and utilise the best sketches to their advantage.

The Comedy Lab has been the springboard for shows like Modern Toss, as well as showing original material by everyone from Ricky Gervais to Peter Kay. Tonight, Anna & Katy (Anna Crilly and Katy Wix) present a one-off sketch show, ploughing such wilfully peculiar furrows as a German hospital soap opera, featuring a cameo from primetime comedy type Lee Mack; a deeply awkward village prize-giving event; and a pair of Liverpudlian teenagers obsessed with measuring things. Like most oddball comedy, that all sounds rubbish on paper, but it's actually been very nicely observed and deftly executed.

Lee Mack interview

Funnyman Lee Mack tells TV Choice about his return as a team captain for the new series of the comedy panel show Would I Lie To You?...

JLS's Aston Merrygold in drag for Lee Mack

JLS singer Aston Merrygold looks uncomfortable on Lee Mack's telly show - in a blonde beehive wig.

Lee Mack wants your party tricks...

Got an amazing party trick that has to be performed on television? Lee Mack's All Star Cast wants to hear from you...

Lee Mack's unnovative inventions

Do you have a brilliant idea for a gadget or device that may or may not work? Good. Lee Mack's All Star Cast wants to hear from you...

Lee Mack's All-Star Cast is a total mess, albeit quite an enjoyable one. The show is an unwieldy composite of comedy, celebrity chat, sketches, stand-up, lookalikes and participation from the studio audience, elevated to the all-star status of the title.

That it works at all is largely down to the heroic efforts of Lee Mack, who grabs the somewhat feeble format by the throat and runs with it, firing off witticisms as he goes.

But there are times when sheer charm and bravado are not enough. As an interviewer Mack is absolutely terrible, suffering from a bad case of Jonathan Ross syndrome, in which a host is so busy thinking up a smart response that he doesn't actually listen to the guest's answer. No great loss when the guest is Shane Richie, going into tedious cod Cockney overdrive, but Henry Winkler may have had something interesting to say about playing The Fonz in cult TV show Happy Days.

Instead he was called upon to judge various competitions and provide a cameo in a shambolic sitcom-style sketch, acting beside the plank that is Ulrika Jonsson. Ulrika needn't prepare her BAFTA acceptance speech quite yet, but she threw herself enthusiastically into the part and proved fair game for several barbed gags at her expense.

Which is All Star Cast's other strength. It may never be accused of being slick and polished, but it does generate surprisingly large quantities of cosy goodwill.

The excellent Lee Mack does his heroic best to hold together the shambolic mess that is BBC1's Lee Mack's All Star Cast. Is it a chat show? Is it variety? Is it audience participation?

He's a great stand-up and I love his sitcom, Not Going Out. So my expectations were already ridiculously high for Lee Mack's new talk show, Lee Mack's All Star Cast which made its debut on BBC 1, Friday night. I wasn't disappointed.

Despite the fact that it was all fairly shambolic and chaotic - like it had been shot and edited on a shoestring budget for Channel 5 - the strength of Lee Mack's character and his sharp Northern wit kept it entertaining and fast paced from beginning to end.

During the show guests Frank Skinner and Fern Britton were invited to guess who various audience members were supposed to look like and choose their most embarrassing stories - all very Graham Norton, though somehow much more engaging. Lee Mack was also great in his ability to take the piss out of his guests without them taking umbrage.

But without doubt the best bit of the show was the sketch which saw Mack in his bed sit trying to get Tess Daly to ditch her hubbie 'Peter Kay' and sleep with him while being serenaded by James Blunt taking off his monster hit, You're Beautiful.

It was all reminiscent of Eric Morecambe at his best (indeed there was an Eric Morecambe poster on the door of the bed sit). And Tess Daly's acting skills were a revelation. She could have found it all rather embarrassing but really went along with it.

Looking forward to the next one, though I hope they manage to sort out the editing!