Les Dennis

Sandra Bullock to star in Life's Too Short

Oscar winner Sandra Bullock is set to star in a new comedy series with Keith Chegwin, Les Dennis and Barry from EastEnders.

Les Dennis becomes a father for the third time

TV star Les Dennis has become a father for the third time.

The All Star Impression Show was ITV1's big novelty entertainment show for Boxing Day, wherein celebrities did impressions of other celebrities - except for Joe Pasquale, who came on and was Joe Pasquale, in an oddly unconvincing manner.

For weeks before broadcast, ITV1 had promoted the show as if it were the magnificent glazed goose of its Christmas schedules, to be placed on our table to cries of "God bless you, good broadcasting sir!" In the event, The All Star Impression Show was essentially ITV1 bringing a roast cat to the dinner table, garnished with minced rat stuffing.

Eamonn Holmes as Elvis Presley kicked off proceedings. You need not ask which era Elvis he chose. This was not '68 Comeback Special; it was more 99 Flake Comeback Special. Indeed, in sunglasses and goitre, Holmes could have removed the cape and gone on to knock off both Roy Orbison and Carlos the Jackal, but sadly lacked the imaginative expanse to do so.

He was followed by what appeared to be Arsène Wenger doing a camp Jimmy Corkhill from Brookside - a frankly mind-blowing concept - but which perusal of the credits revealed to be a comedian called Stevie Riks doing Paul O'Grady. I hope that the confusion over this conveys some measure of how surreally awful the whole thing was, like a collection of your more lacklustre in-laws suddenly deciding to put on a revue, apparently written by their parents and occasionally studded with someone from Coronation Street.

Things reached their "WTF?" apogee with a sketch that involved Bobby Davro as Chris Tarrant, the wrinkles drawn on to his face with black felt-tip, and Les Dennis playing Gary Barlow as someone with no distinguishing physical or conversational features whatsoever, in a bath. Naked.

The skit revolved around Barlow trying to guess how Tarrant washed - "You gonna use your loofah?" - and peaked with Dennis rising, wholly naked, from the bath, genitals covered in a distressingly meagre slick of bath-foam. It may even have been Matey.

This, then, is why so many of us found ourselves at the bottom of the garden at 4am, sitting on a wet trampoline with a bad uncle. This, then, was Christmas.

This could possibly be the most deranged variety show you'll ever see, the only place on earth where you can watch Christopher Biggins pretending to be Boris Johnson, and Jerry Hall impersonating Katie Price. If that doesn't draw you in, how about Joe Pasquale as Lady Ga-Ga? Or Ulrika Jonsson as David Beckham? No? Surely Vanessa Feltz masquerading as James May is irresistible. As is Eamonn Holmes as Elvis Presley. And David Gest as Elton John. Les Dennis as Gary Barlow... The list goes on, and just gets odder. The All Star Impressions Show could be completely awful or it could be enjoyably barmy. It certainly has a very good pedigree, being co-produced by Steve Coogan's and Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's production companies. And it has a certain surreal gloss that could be quite winning. Harry Hill will make a guest appearance, though we don't know whether he will reprise the Morrissey impression that won him Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes all those years ago.

This new series from the Comedy Connections people has a rather misleading title.

Despite the efforts of presenter Clive Anderson and three other scriptwriters to find the funny side of different TV formats this is a fairly straight run-through.

It would certainly benefit from less of Clive's awkward links and more of what we really want to see, the clips which cover all the bases from an ancient show called Top Town right through to today's The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and John Sergeant doing his Stiffly Come Dancing thing.

Among the gems tonight is ex-Corrie actress Debra Stephenson doing impressions of judges Amanda Holden, Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue.

And Les Dennis reveals that the clapometer on Opportunity Knocks was operated by a couple of prop men pushing a lever to pretty much wherever they liked. A generation is collectively gutted.