Nicholas Parsons

The third Comedy Lab pilot of the series is a mockumentary tackling the issue of disability, an issue rather important to me as I suffer from Asperger's syndrome.

Rick and Peter begins with T4 presenter Rick Edwards (whom I'd never heard before) becoming an internet sensation following a YouTube montage clip of him repeatedly mocking the disabled. As a result he's ordered by a Channel 4 executive (Miles Jupp) to attend a school presentation given by Hollyoaks and Cast Offs star Peter Mitchell, who is paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair.

In terms of mockumentaries, it's not the most innovative ever made. Many shows have covered the supposedly nasty (albeit fake) attitudes of a celebrity. And it also features other guest stars like Nicholas Parsons and Giles Cohen in self-deprecating roles, but this idea has been implemented numerous times in shows such as Extras.

However, my main problem with Rick and Peter is actually the relationship between the two. Since Rick mocks the 'mind disabled' rather than the 'leg disabled', surely the character should be made to do something with someone with a more relevant disability?

The problem with that, of course, lies with TV networks' obsession with the visibly disabled. I know that I'm 'mind disabled', but I look normal - and TV doesn't like that. It seems to me that unless you have a disability in which you look different (missing limb, dwarfism, etc.) or require some sort of, for want of a better term, hardware (wheelchair, white stick, hearing aid) you'll not get a look in on TV because they'll be asking: "How can the viewers tell you're disabled?"

In the end all that happens is that we get comparisons with Rain Man, which is inaccurate because he's a savant and most autistic people are not. Either that or it's Tourette's syndrome and you get someone swearing their head off, which again most Tourette's sufferers do not do. If we don't do something odd we don't get a look in, which really frustrates me. In terms of my disability, the only one I can think of appearing in a British sitcom was one of the children in the Jasper Carrott sitcom All About Me, which is widely regarded as being one of the worst sitcoms ever made. Plus that child is somewhat overshadowed by the main narrator of the story, a boy in a wheelchair suffering from cerebral palsy.

I don't think that Rick and Peter will get a full series, but if it does I hope they cover all ground when it comes to disability, not just what you can see.

My festival: Nicholas Parsons (Link expired)

It was the first ever one in 1947. I'd just started as an actor, having done five years as an engineer on Clydebank in order to please my family - Glasgow is my adopted city, for which I have great affection.

Nicholas Parsons: 'I'm too much of a fighter to retire'

Nicholas Parsons, 87, whose Edinburgh show is a Fringe favourite, talks about his staying power.

Q&A: Actor Nicholas Parsons

Nicholas Parsons has been an actor - he is most adamant that he is first and foremost an actor - for almost 70 years so it's not surprising, given the erratic nature of his profession, that he has been obliged to assume a number of alternative guises over the years from leading man to comedy sidekick to quiz master.

From the 1950s to 1966, Arthur Haynes was the biggest name in British television comedy. He followed the usual path for comedians from this era, working variety shows and joining the army entertainment division before finding stardom on independent television. His comedy dealt with puncturing the pomposity of the ruling classes. Paul Merton talks to Haynes's old comedy partner, Nicholas Parsons, about him.

While some comedians are lionised after they've stopped appearing on TV, others are quietly forgotten. Nicholas Parsons spends more than Just a Minute with Paul Merton recalling his partnership with one of the latter - Arthur Haynes. Viewers of a certain age will recall the partnership that pulled huge audiences to ITV in the 1950s and 60s. It's the comedy of a simpler, slower age; Parsons remembers how depicting a vicar in a sketch was considered disrespectful. There's nostalgia and curiosity value, not least with a priceless archive interview with writer Johnny Speight. Plus, rewarding glimpses of Wendy Richard, Patricia Hayes, Michael Caine and the Rolling Stones.

Paul Merton invites his regular Just a Minute compère Nicholas Parsons to the stage for this one-off special celebration of the comedian Arthur Haynes, who was one of Britain's most popular entertainers (and an early star of ITV) before he died of a heart attack in November 1966. The young Parsons appeared as the straight man to Haynes in sketches on The Arthur Haynes Show. It's the sort of programme that Merton, who matches an easy improvisational style with a palpable interest in the history of comedy, does very well. Though it is uneven in quality, some of the archive footage is a real treat.

Just a Minute, the Methuselah of panel games, has been going since 1967 with plenty of hesitation and repetition, but still no sight of the final whistle. Preserved like an intact fossil in the sedimentary layer of radio history, its formula remains perfect, its host Nicholas Parsons unchanged, despite 60 years on radio, and new talent accretes like barnacles on its venerable frame. The latest guests who are likely to stay the distance are Terry Wogan, who should be fabulous if he can cope with the hesitation rule, and Rick Wakeman, rock star and anarchic thinker who turns out to be an amusing and quick-witted addition to the ranks of Radio 4 comedians.

A cute kitten being pecked to death by a robin on a Christmas card would have been funnier than this jumble of a play by Andy Lynch (again), here assisted by Johnny Vegas. Vegas also played Les Dawson. The plot concerned Dawson being a surprise appointment to host the BBC's top Saturday evening attraction of yesteryear, Blankety Blank. The character action was between Dawson and a disapproving BBC executive, played by Nicholas Parsons. It sounded like a bundle of unwashed insecurities being laundered in public as well as a waste of the serious talents of Nicholas Parsons, the best straight man in the business.