Mariah Carey

The first series of Chatty Man was a winner and Mariah Carey lets her celebrity hair down (metaphorically speaking) when she has the honour of being Alan's very first A-list guest for the start of his second series. Will Mariah get Alan's waspish sense of humour? Will she even understand him? It promises to be a legendary collision of two worlds, like the time our cuddly host invited Martina Navratilova to join him for a game of swingball.

Mariah's also going to be performing her single I Want To Know What Love Is and plugging her new movie Precious, which is said to be brilliant. By contrast, Alan's other guest, Never Mind The Buzzcocks' captain Noel Fielding, looks like a much safer, more predictable option and it must be the first time he's ever been called that.

Personally, I found Alan Carr's recent statement that gay men make the best chatshow hosts because they are "gossipy" rather annoying - not only because it relies on a particular stereotype, but also because it would imply that Graham Norton is better in the field than Jonathan Ross. For all his faults, Wossy still has the edge on that score. That said, the last series of Carr's show was often hilarious with the right guests. Whether Noel Fielding and Mariah Carey fit into that category, we'll have to wait and see.