Morgana Robinson

Radio Times review

Vic, Bob and Beef are entering a danceathon in Julie's bistro. They've got their killer moves worked out. There's the one where Vic pretends to be Richard III extracting sardines from a pantry, and the one where Bob throws wrens towards Saturn. But then Vic and Beef set about breaking each other's legs...

The plot doesn't matter, of course. Slightly more structured as Fools now is - Bob goes to the bistro "to move the story on" - we're here to be sprayed with a thousand stupid ideas. Fine bits of comic business include Vic's impossible crotch-grabbing arm, and Julie (Morgana Robinson) claiming to have done the choreography for Ross Kemp's Gangs of Namibia.

Vic and Bob return, with Bob's Nordic son Erik gearing up for a blind date. He's not keen but, after some cajoling from Vic, agrees. Meanwhile, Beef (Matt Berry) joins Vic and Bob in a band that will celebrate the opening week of Julie's bistro, brandishing a keytar. Sadly, considering the hoo-hah over whether it might or might not get a second series, things in the house don't seem anywhere near as sharp as series one - except for Morgana Robinson's bonkers Julie, of course, who is all swivel-eyed brilliance.

Comedy greats Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer may be getting on a bit now but they've definitely not lost their touch as their surreal sitcom House Of Fools returns for a second series .

They're older and wiser, but as funny as ever.

The show is set in the home of old friends 'Vic' and 'Bob' where the gags come fast and furious, as do the pratfalls.

"It's an old-fashioned sitcom with people falling over and word play," explains Vic, "but there are also good stories with peaks and troughs."

This season sees their sexy neighbour Julie (Morgana Robinson) opening a bistro, Bob's strange son Erik (Daniel Simonson) getting a girlfriend, and more hilarious visits from their lothario pal Beef (Matt Berry).

It's the brand of comedy that made Vic and Bob famous in the 90s with their anarchic panel show, Shooting Stars.

"We needed barriers to keep the fans back," recalls Vic, 56.

"But now we are the oldest comics working," Bob, 55, adds. "And there's less drink involved."

"I have a Snowball 10 minutes before filming ends. That's about as rock 'n' roll as it gets, but this is probably the most fun we've had. I'm really proud of it."

Matt Berry and Morgana Robinson on House of Fools

Today, we bring you our catch-up with Bob's regular house guests, Matt Berry and Morgana Robinson.

Radio Times review

There is nothing like House of Fools for clangingly mad farce. The Christmassy special does Vic and Bob's usual trick of stirring up a big blizzard of bonkers, but with added tinsel, and it's a joy to watch. To the extent that there's a plot it involves the gang trying to steal a bobble hat from Phil Collinss house, because the one Bob bought for his sinister son Erik caught fire.

But that's merely a string on which to hang their bursts of slapstick, fart gags, songs, snogs, silly props (including a massive horn), mad accents and, of course, mishaps involving Bob's toupee. Julie (Morgana Robinson), their refulgent neighbour, is on great form, as is Beef (Matt Berry in a sort of toga), who nearly scuppers the Collins raid because he "can't actually whisper".

Sky's high-concept comedy, in which therapist Rebecca Front combs over the psyches of her famous patients, concludes its second series tonight with Gracie Fields (Frances Barber) and Daphne du Maurier (Morgana Robinson) among those exposing their neuroses. One of the less amusing, and less admirable, aspects of the show is the male comedians' pantomime dame-style grotesque parodies of women, a gag taken to extremes here as Mathew Baynton, Kevin Eldon and Dustin Demri-Burns play a trio of hideous witches.

Radio Times review

Steven Toast is in turmoil - the greatest love of his life, Lorna Wynde, is appearing in The Graduate on the London stage. Toast has never recovered from their break-up, after which he had an unfortunate accident in Oddbins.

The best bits of the final, typically uneven episode are the masterly pastiches of dreadful 1980s American soaps. Toast (Matt Berry) and Wynde (Morgana Robinson) starred together in one such atrocity, but it put an end to her TV career as she went cross-eyed in close-ups.

Steve Pemberton, soon to be seen in Mapp and Lucia on BBC One, plays a very effete Francis Bacon and Josh Homme, lead singer of rock band Queens of the Stone Age, guests as Lorna's jealous husband.

Radio Times review

On the therapist's sofa tonight are Lucille Ball (the late I Love Lucy star), a gruff Mrs Noah and Bonnie Parker (Clyde's partner in crime). We also meet Mary Magdalene and Pocahontas; the former bears an unholy resemblance to Morgana Robinson's unrepentant Anna Nicole Smith last week, while Pocahontas embarks on a surreal rant about celebrity culture and tax-dodging comedians.

My favourite sketch is a group workshop for women traumatised by Hitchcock: Michelle Gomez plays a brooding Ingrid Bergman, whose treatment involves wrestling with a giant coffee cup. The actors are clearly having so much fun that, even when the gags are more weird than wonderful, it's impossible not to giggle along.

Over on Sky Arts 1, some light relief from Psychobitches, one of the best new comedies on TV last year, though given its tiny home, few people actually got to see it. It's a sketch show set in a therapist's office, in which famous (dead) women from history tell psychiatrist Rebecca Front their troubles. The first series was a knockout - Julia Davis played a wailing hybrid of Pam Ayres and Sylvia Plath; the Brontë sisters were foul-mouthed, filthy puppets obsessed with sex, and Sharon Horgan played a campy Eva Peron, who clung on to her bottles of "boobles". It was silly, and odd, and very funny.

This second series is almost as good, though it feels more like a traditional sketch show and is slightly patchier, perhaps due to the sheer number of writers (I counted 12 on the credits for the first episode of this double bill, and seven on the second). In the best sketch, Kathy Burke and Reece Shearsmith play the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret as crude and grotesque, glugging down booze as Burke repeatedly rejects her on-screen offspring with delicious cruelty. Morgana Robinson joins the cast to play a sloppy Anna Nicole Smith - hers is a masterclass in physical comedy - and there's a musical skit featuring Unity, Decca and Nancy Mitford, as imagined by Horgan, Samantha Spiro and Sophie Ellis Bexter. In a sketch the Mail has already called "hideous", Michelle Gomez has gone from Doctor Who's Missy to an even more terrifying villain, playing Thatcher as a Hannibal Lecter-style monster, incapable of love. It's at its finest when it's upsetting the establishment, and it relishes its naughtiness.

The second episode was less sharp. Perhaps, given its hyperactive pace, it works better in single doses. But I loved Horgan as Carmen Miranda - "Of course I'm on fucking drugs" - and Sheridan Smith as a mute Sleeping Beauty, whose endless sleep has an ulterior motive. And anything that gets Kathy Burke back on our screens, even for a few minutes, is well worth our attention.