Micky Flanagan

Micky Flanagan, Reading Hexagon, review

Micky Flanagan's verbal panache and sauntering stage presence remain intact, says Dominic Cavendish.

Harry Hill: I was hoping Micky Flanagan would take over

Harry Hill, talking about TV Burp, says: "I do miss watching it, and I was hoping that someone else would take over. I was talking to Micky Flanagan, and I was hoping he would do it. It's a lot of work, though. I'm the only mug that would do it."

Comedy gold: Micky Flanagan's The 'Out Out' Tour

A cockney lad who now drinks Zinfandel and admires the Montessori way, Micky Flanagan satirises both sides of the class divide.

Cockney Micky Flanagan's debut show from his 2010 sell-out tour begins a night of witty stand-up on Channel 4. He tells us tales of a working-class childhood and the difference between going "out" (pub) and going "out out" (club).

The last time I saw Griff Rhys Jones on television was during the Jubilee pageant, when he was meandering up the Thames in a motor launch. I thought he looked miserable then, but that was nothing compared to how fed up he appeared presenting the first episode of the comedy panel quiz show, A Short History of Everything Else (Channel 4). Griff's script opened with: "We're off down memory lane without a seat belt ... because we didn't have to wear them in those days" and went downhill thereafter. His rictus smile throughout was almost certainly pain, though it would be more charitable to put it down to professionalism.

It wasn't just the script that was desperate: it was the concept as well. It was as though someone in the commissioning department had watched a couple of episodes of Have I Got News For You on Dave and come up with the brainwave of dispensing with topicality and making a news show that would feel like a repeat the first time you watched it. From round to round, the format never changed; Griff would make some crap gags to introduce a sequence of archive footage before inviting the two team captains - Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker - along with guests Micky Flanagan and Kirsty Wark to make their own crap gags. I guess it was cheap, but it wasn't funny.

Brigstocke looked for a moment as if he thought he had actually wandered on to the set of a HIGNFY repeat as he gave a passable imitation of an extremely grumpy Paul Merton, looking permanently pissed off and not laughing at anyone else's jokes. But, on reflection, he was probably just annoyed he too had let himself be talked into signing up for such a turkey.

Satire just doesn't work on 30 year-old archive footage. Margaret Thatcher gags stopped having any edge the moment Ben Elton started making them in the 1980s. As for the old clips of Elton John having a tantrum and the 70s beer adverts ... For what it's worth, Charlie and Kirsty won by 15 points to 14. The result might seem rather more relevant in five years though, after the show has been repeated a few times.

Now one of TV's more enduring topical comedy shows - thanks to its high turnover of original comedy voices and a keen eye for spotting upcoming talent - the satirical news quiz returns for an eleventh season. As always, Dara O'Briain keeps a loose grip on the organised chaos as, tonight, team captains Hugh Dennis and Andy Parsons are joined by Nathan Caton, Chris Addison, Micky Flanagan and Greg Davies.

Ubiquitous Griff Rhys Jones hosts this new comedy panel show, in which players are challenged to give "a short history of everything else". If that sounds slightly vague, then it's appropriate for the programme's rather nebulous concept. Each week, team captains Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker and their guests watch varied clips of archive footage, and try to prove that they remember more about the stories behind the films than the other team. But they're really competing for points which are nonsensically allocated according to the drollness of their observations. The guests for this week's opener are broadcaster Kirsty Wark and comedian Micky Flanagan.

The show's real strength is the footage itself - the researchers have done a great job mining the archives to provide what Jones describes as "a serious nostalgia fest". Tonight there's vintage footage of Peter York discussing Sloane Rangers - "my goodness, don't they look lovely" - and a meringue pie being squished into Jeremy Clarkson's face. It may be yet another panel show, but this offbeat trip down memory lane extracts lots of humour from our social history.