Lee Mack

Do you think Rob Brydon is telling the truth when he assures us that when panellists read statements off their cards, they're seeing them for the very first time?

Or is that a lie as well? That thought might have occurred to you a few times already as all the participants turn out to be surprisingly capable of spinning a believable yarn around the most unlikely of subjects. So either the show is fibbing about the rules or Britain's celebs are actually a far more devious bunch than we give them credit for.

Tonight, no-nonsense Dragon Deborah Meaden insists that she once called in an exorcist after spooky goings-on in her home, Patrick Kielty claims an extraordinary meeting with Muhammad Ali, stand-up comic Mark Watson relives a childhood trauma, Bernard Cribbins holds up his hands to car theft. Worryingly, we're inclined to believe every word they say.

Team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack are on especially fine form tonight.

In tonight's episode of the comedy panel show, guests Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Rufus Hound, Miranda Hart and Rhod Gilbert compete to disentangle outlandish fact from fiction. Can it be true, for instance, that Fearnley-Whittingstall allows his dog to lick a well-known yeast extract spread off his face? Has Hound visited every pub called The Red Lion inside the M25, apart from four? Comedian Rob Brydon is the host, with David Mitchell and Lee Mack as the team captains.

Ronnie Corbett is the very special guest on David Mitchell's team tonight. It's a chance for host Rob Brydon to try out his favourite Corbett impression on the real thing and also an opportunity for a very happy Lee Mack to fulfil a childhood dream.

Corbett's presence - small though it is - is a huge part of the show which also sees Julian Clary attempting to explain why he's got a unicorn in his garden and David discussing his unusual childhood friendship with a bucket.

The other two panelists, Sarah Millican and Holly Walsh, may be less well-known but in such legendary company as this they more than keep up their end of the banter - adding up to another perfectly breezy ­half-hour.

When writer and impressionist Ronni Ancona appears on QI, the show is sometimes a little less funny than usual but always greatly more interesting and even absorbing. She was a boon to QI and proves to be the same again here as she takes the role of first interviewer in a new run of the tag-team chat show. Her guest is comic Lee Mack, who has as many one-liners at his command as you'd hope and expect but gets drawn into richer areas about working in comedy. This is the joy of Chain Reaction: the guest is interviewed by someone who really knows their work and enjoys pressing for information that lighter chat shows miss. And you'll never guess who Lee Mack chooses to interview in next week's episode.

Comedians ribbing each other about far-fetched tales - it's what Friday-night telly was made for. And this week's gathering of deceivers and doubters may be the sharpest yet. Joining chalk-and-cheese team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack are Ruth Jones (of Gavin & Stacey fame), Jason Manford (The One Show) and comedians Jack Dee and Peter Serafinowicz. In short, every one's a winner. Tonight's best round involves a mystery guest called Ian. The question is, did he save Jones's tortoise from death, sell batteries to David Mitchell via eBay, or get attacked by schoolchildren alongside Manford? Finding out is a blast. Plus there's a new round where host Rob Brydon has a go at fooling the teams himself. But did he really once steal Catherine Zeta-Jones's dinner money?

Full marks to whoever booked the panellists on tonight's Would I Lie To You?. It's a solid gold line-up this week. Joining David Mitchell, Lee Mack and Rob Brydon are Ruth Jones, Jason Manford, Jack Dee and Peter Serafinowicz - taking a break from what is practically a full-time job of filling the Twitter-verse with surreal one-liners.

This week they're all bringing their best poker faces to some very tall tales involving Ray Charles, a tortoise, a human sausage, a cheese and onion sandwich, Lee Mack's life expectancy, and David Mitchell's battery-buying habits.

And Rob Brydon's getting in on the act as well with his own true or false questions - did he really once steal Catherine Zeta-Jones' lunch money?

There's a whole clutch of matey comedians, including Rob Brydon and Lee Mack, who seem to do nothing much except appear in various combinations on comedy panel shows like this. Would I Lie to You?, however, an update on Call My Bluff, is the most enjoyable format. David Mitchell and Ruth Jones also appear - their trick seems to be to tell their tall stories with deceptive incompetence, which is why the biggest-seeming lies turn out to be true - except for when they don't.

Jonathan Ross's old slot is taken up this week by the fourth series of this jovial comedy panel show - a safe play by the BBC, as they figure out how best to plug the gap left by Ross. It's hosted by Rob Brydon, and tonight features Fern Britton, Richard E Grant, Martin Clunes and Sanjeev Bhaskar alongside regular captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack, as the two teams attempt to fool each other into believing a series of plausible lies.

The best factoid in this show is that when he appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse, Martin Clunes deliberately called him "Cheese Inspector". That's not even one of the fibs in this week's show - it's just one of the inbetween bits of banter that gets chucked in for free. And the return of this series ratchets up the laughter quotient of Friday nights on the BBC (and Martin Clunes' career, come to that) by roughly four million per cent.

It makes you realise that all those years Clunes has spent stomping around ­Cornwall as the grumpy Doc Martin, pretending to be Reggie Perrin or making ­documentaries about dogs have been a waste of his talents. What he should really have been doing is spending his time larking about with his mates on comedy panel shows because I've never seen him enjoy himself as much as he does here.

It all adds up to a brilliant start to the series with team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack conjuring perfect comebacks out of thin air. Host Rob Brydon's impromptu impersonations add an extra coat of comedy emulsion to an already ­sparkling format. Tonight's other guests, Richard E Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar put on their best butter-wouldn't-melt faces as they swear blind that they once rear-ended Michael Winner and made a hip-hop Hamlet. And is Fern Britton really a secret Morris Dancer?

Lee Mack vs Charlie Brooker on So Wrong It's Right

So Wrong It's Right is the radio show hosted by Charlie Brooker in which his guests must try to "out-wrong each other". In tonight's episode he is joined by Tom Basden, Josie Long and Lee Mack - and it's with Lee that things get a little... heated.