Neil Morrissey

Neil Morrissey confronts his troubled past

Neil Morrissey reveals all about being split from his brother and put into care... for stealing sweets.

Drunk Neil Morrissey almost handcuffed on a flight

He is famous for Men Behaving Badly, and Neil Morrissey lived up to his character by getting a little too rowdy on a British Airways flight.

Review of Inn Mates

Yet more licence fee money down the drain as the BBC launches the pilot of another "yoof" comedy. Neil Morrissey, hang your head in shame.

As all right thinking people agree, Cheers is the greatest ensemble TV sitcom of all time. There have been several attempts to relocate its success in a British pub, the latest of which is Inn Mates, a pilot by John Warburton who is the first writer to have gone through the BBC's College of Comedy and got a script on screen.

Whilst it falls way short of its illustrious American predecessor, Inn Mates is amiable and entertaining fun set in a red-brick modern monstrosity optimistically called The Friendship Inn.

It revolves around the disparate groups of characters that frequent or serve in it. These include two twentysomething couples with contrasting lifestyles, their sexually abandoned alcoholic single friend, the ruthless landlady and her wheelchair-using DJ, two dozy and doting community support police officers, and a gay man whose donated sperm has come back to haunt him in the form of a teenage biological son desperate to form a bond.

The various strands don't really hang together, and Inn Mates feels slightly like several sitcoms sharing the same half hour. Of these the father/son scenario is by far the strongest, and could even go it alone as a spin-off.

It offers pathos, charm, wit, conflict and originality. Plus on-screen chemistry between Neil Morrissey, playing against type, and Joe Tracini, who is so good that I can almost forgive him for Coming Of Age.

The definition of insanity, according to someone-or-other, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The equivalent in a television review is complaining that a new BBC3 sitcom is puerile piffle - and yet, how can we avoid it?

There are so many of them and (with a few honourable exceptions, each a delightful surprise as they buck the trend) they are so bad. No-one ever admits to liking them, whether in the right age bracket they are supposedly targeted at or not, yet still they come, on and on, a grim onslaught of unfunny scenarios and jokes that most ten-year-old boys would reject as childish.

The latest is Inn Mates and what's most disappointing about this pilot effort isn't the lameness of its setting - a pub called The Friendship Inn, where various 20-somethings drink, get off with each other and trade unwitty banter - or script, but the "boast" that its writer, John Warburton, is the first person to have gone through the BBC's College of Comedy and get their script on screen. That was a scheme set up for aspiring sitcom writers which chose six people to have their scripts mentored and workshopped for a year before deciding if any would become a show.

The mind boggles at the ones which were rejected and at the idea that Inn Mates - whose jokes include someone getting Stanley Matthews the footballer and Bernard Matthews the turkey farmer mixed up - can have gone through so much yet still resemble a sub-par episode of Two Pints Of Lager..., BBC3's apparent idea of the ne plus ultra of comic achievement.

As well as its young cast, Neil Morrissey pops up as the sperm donor father of one character - his catchphrase is "I'm not your dad!" - who looks utterly depressed by it all. Given that he appeared in five series of Men Behaving Badly, this is a terrible indictment.

It is, of course, unfair to attack a young writer's first script, to judge a potential series by its pilot and to expect BBC3's young target audience to enjoy the likes of Rev or Roger And Val Have Just Got In. But comedy's a tough business and it's also unfair to keep churning out these unfunny booze-and-shagging sitcoms. For the love of God, please stop.

Watching the antics of Maisie and Pete (sexy couple in relationship set-to), Sharon and John (not-so-sexy couple who worry they're getting boring) and Blue (party animal who tends to wake up in abandoned supermarket trollies) was a bit like watching an episode of Hollyoaks but with added funnies.

More interesting were those on the periphery of this pilot: the tubby pair of community support officers bonded by naivety and fantasies; and Josh, played by Joe Pasquale's round-faced son, Joe Tracini, trying to earn the love of sperm donor dad Neil Morrissey, an intriguing proposition if ever I saw one.

This one will need time to grow - unlike Grandma's House, which has the makings of a sure-fire hit.

A comedy pilot from writer/comedian John Warburton, this sitcom is centred on a load of mates at a pub, the Friendship Inn. Hence Inn Mates. Its first gag is someone getting hit in the balls, and things decline from there. Jonathan Dixon (Darryl off Corrie) is joined by Joe Tracini (most recently seen in BBC4's The Great Outdoors) and Neil Morrissey. A likable cast, sure, but this is barely Two Pints-equalling.

If you think BBC3's new comedy about the dysfunctional regulars of a run down pub sounds a little familiar it's because it is and bears more than a passing resemblance to Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps. But the big difference is, this actually has some laughs in it, something that's even more surprising when you consider Neil Morrissey's in the cast.

It was only a matter of time before James Corden got his own celebrity panel show and here it is... basically, A Question Of Sport for idiots. Celeb guests include Freddie Flintoff, Neil Morrissey, David Haye and Jamie Redknapp, who spend the first half bantering loudly with their larger-than-life host about tattoos and booze - it's the televisual equivalent of Nuts magazine.

A new comedy quiz, hosted by James Corden, which draws on sports fans' love of lists. Team captains are England cricket monster Andrew Flintoff and Sky football pundit Jamie Redknapp, here to try to shake off the national embarrassment of those holiday advertisements. Regular panellists are comedian John Bishop and Sky Sports News presenter Georgie Thompson. Show one - an hour-long special with guests David Haye and Neil Morrissey was still in the edit suite as we went to press.