Paddy McGuinness

Paddy McGuinness interview

"I was walking down Oxford Street earlier in London, and I got the sense, if I were to fall down, everyone would just keep walking over me."

How Paddy McGuinness became ITV's hottest new star

Paddy McGuinness is having a good year. His stand-up arena tour begins on October 5. He'll record the third series of Take Me Out in November, plus there's a TV panel show planned for next year.

Mr Saturday night: Exciting times for Paddy McGuinness

It was the biggest and best day of his life - but Paddy McGuinness says life has ambled along as normal for him and wife Christine Martin since they tied the knot in June. Happily settled at home in Bolton, he jokes: "It's good yeah - there's no change.

Paddy McGuinness cannot understand wife's scouse accent

Stunning Christine Martin has left hubby Paddy McGuinness begging for Mersey - because he can't understand a word of her Scouse accent.

A welcome new addition to the Friday night schedules - some real comedy in among the chat shows masquerading as such. Pitched at the post-pub crowd it's an archive show in which some of today's comics celebrate the great TV moments that inspired them to pursue a career in stand-up, or simply left them doubled over helpless with laughter and admiration.

Jack Dee is up first, recalling the impact that Billy Connolly's debut appearance on Parkinson - when the Big Yin told the infamous bum joke that turned him into a comedy superstar overnight - had on his teenage self back in 1975. Among those piling in to concur, and recall what an enormous influence Connolly was, are Jon Culshaw, Dara O'Briain, Alan Carr and Jo Brand. Then, before it all gets too indulgent, Brand recalls her own favourite - a groundbreaking 1988 sketch from French and Saunders in which the duo play dirty old men watching a beauty pageant. Again, there's praise from the likes of Alan Carr, Joan Rivers, Andi Osho and - a touch bizarrely - Paddy McGuinness, before moving on to the next (Rhod Gilbert on Eddie Izzard's surreal "learning French" routine), and finishing with hymns to Max Miller and Les Dawson. In truth, the old doesn't always mix with the new, and the insights aren't always scintillating, but it's a chance to enjoy again some hilarious moments, and to discover some past flights of genius that may have passed you by.

Paddy McGuinness interview

He earns hundreds of thousands of pounds as the host of Take Me Out ... but when the series ended, Paddy McGuinness's dad offered him money because he was worried he had fallen on hard times.

The model who Paddy McGuinness takes out

Curvy Christine Martin shows the electric sights that light up the life of Take Me Out host Paddy McGuinness.

Paddy McGuinness quits Twitter due to cowardly bullies

Comedian Paddy McGuinness has quit Twitter - because he was fed up of people criticising his friends and family.

And if we're looking to invent new words and phrases, how about "Crap as A Comedy Roast"? You'd use it to describe something that was as awkward and contrived and joyless as Jimmy Carr and chums spending an hour taking the p*** out of someone semi-famous sat opposite them on stage.

"Roasting" is an American tradition: being brutally but lovingly rounded upon by your peers while taking it all with benign grace - think: This is Your Life, You Stupid T***. The US TV version of this features some of the most staggeringly lewd, vicious punchlines I've ever heard, the enormous capacity of Pamela Anderson's vagina, for example, being a recurring theme on hers.

So what was in store for Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne and Chris Tarrant? Uncomfortable oddness, really. Jonathan Ross visibly rattled Brucey with some opening salvos: "He wasn't a pretty baby," he tells the audience, "but he did grow up to be a f***ing ugly adult." What else? Oh yeah: "When the dinosaurs died out, he was taken in for questioning." Arf! The weird thing was that most of the roasters were just typical gun-for-hire, Channel 4-type comedian fodder. Paddy McGuinness did a nervous Who Wants to be a Millionaire? skit on Tarrant, who looked so prickly throughout that you suspect Alan Partridge would have taken a roasting better. Jack Dee slagged everyone off and looked sadder than usual to be doing it. There was one quite funny joke about it being hard to believe the real Sharon Osbourne is here tonight, "because the real Sharon Osbourne is in a black bin bag round the back of a plastic surgeon's in LA!. And she took it all quite well, mainly because she just hooted like as sozzled nan the entire time.

Maybe everyone else loved it. It just seemed weirdly open and honest. I thought the whole point of being British is that we repress our true feelings, so that when they do pop out they're disguised, perhaps in the form of a witty joke or a song or a droll suicide note. Alternatively, we could just stick to slagging people off behind their backs so that we don't have to pretend to hug them in front of Jimmy Carr afterwards. I don't think A Comedy Roast suits us. If someone can work out a passive-aggressive equivalent, however, we may be in business.

McGuinness: 'I'd love more Max & Paddy'

Comic Paddy McGuinness has said that he would love to work on another series of Max & Paddy's Road To Nowhere.