Paul Merton

Now in its 43rd series, amazingly, little has changed since Have I Got News For You was forced to ditch scandal-hit Angus Deayton as host for the successful but problematic "guest host" format. The thinking is that HIGNFY is kept fresh by having different celebs hosting the show every week, Saturday Night Live-style, and that's true to an extent-but it also means you have boring "safe pair of hands" episodes (here Stephen Mangan, usually Alexander Armstrong) more than the truly memorable hosts (like Boris Johnson or Bruce Forsyth). It also irritates me that the show still keeps in the "mistakes" a guest hosts make during the live recording, as if it's still a novelty having a "non-professional" sitting in the hot-seat and a fluffing a line or two. Isn't this the accepted format of the show now? Why are the still showing us what amounts to bloopers in the show itself?

HIGNFY is still incredibly popular and remains an entertaining watch, but I find myself wishing it would be overhauled. Ian Hislop and Paul Merton have been team captains for so long their shtick is fairly predictable, especially in the latter's case with his surreal meanderings. But more worrying than that, if we're honest HIGNFY is a much less perceptive satirical show than its reputation has us believe. If you note the type of jokes that are made off-the-cuff, or the writers have scripted for the guest host to read off the autocue, the majority of them are silly jibes about a particular famous person's public persona or physical looks. (Politician Eric Pickles is a particular target these days, just because he's fat. I guess Pickles is John Prescott's replacement because they've had the ex-Deputy PM on the show and now we know he's actually a straight-thinking and amusing man.)

Obviously not every joke can be a vividly perceptive gem that tackles the hot issues of the day in a fresh way, but I get the feeling that HIGNFY has less and less to say of real merit these days. It's like everyone who appears on it just follows the pattern they've seen play out hundreds of times, afraid or just unable to take the show down a different path. Why not alter some of the rounds, ditch some of the weaker ones, or bring in a few new ideas? For instance, why is there still a "guest publication" in the Missing Words round? Wasn't that a one-series joke that never got retired? Its weekly inclusion just removes the opportunity for a politically-based joke when the missing word has something to do with a niche topic like raisins instead of something topical and of public interest.

It just feels like HIGNFY could do with a facelift, because it's been around for so long that viewers find it comforting (some people have never known a world without HIGNFY, remember!), and treat it with a reverence it perhaps doesn't deserve anymore. It probably helps that there's no admirable challenger out there, with Channel 4's disappointing 10 O'Clock Live and Adrian Chiles' That Sunday Night Show its closest competitors. In comparison to both, HIGNFY remains genius.

If you were thinking Friday nights had become a little joyless lately, here's good news. The best panel shows around are back to make BBC1's end-of-week comedy desert bloom again.

Unbelievably, this is the 43rd series of Have I Got News for You sifting current events or, put another way, the 364th episode - and so far Ian Hislop hasn't missed one. He'll be renewing hostilities against Paul Merton here, with likeable wit Stephen Mangan in the chair as guest host (coming later in the series: Alastair Campbell!)

At the heart of BBC One's returning Friday night comedy block is the 43rd series of Have I Got News for You. Over the last 22 years the current affairs panel show has clocked up some improbable statistics: no fewer than 363 episodes transmitted, with Alexander Armstrong its most frequent guest host after 19 appearances in the chair. Tonight's show will be hosted by Stephen Mangan, alongside veteran team captains Ian Hislop (who has appeared in all 363 editions) and Paul Merton (a relative novice at just 355). Later in the series, we are promised debuts from new hosts such as former government spin doctor Alastair Campbell, as well as returns from motormouth Jeremy Clarkson and Homeland's Damian Lewis.

This week there was the last of two special episodes on BBC Radio 4 that were recorded in India (a documentary about the India episodes is on Radio 4 at 11.30 on Monday 2nd April), featuring regulars Nicholas Parsons and Paul Merton, English comedian Marcus Brigstocke, and Indian comedians Cyrus Broacha and Anuvab Pal. Topics for discussion included "It's just not cricket" and "Mumbai traffic".

The main difference between this and the normal British edition is that the Indians appear to be much more competitive. Although there are those who will like the faster-paced action, there are those, including myself, that feel it disturbs the flow too much with so many challenges. Still, it makes for an interesting change...

Paul Merton discusses 1990 stay in psychiatric ward

Paul Merton once spent six weeks as a psychiatric patient in London's Maudsley hospital in 1990. He blames what he calls his "manic period" on the side effects of taking the anti-malarial drug Larium.

To celebrate its 45th anniversary, the Radio 4panel show returns to TV for the first time since the 1990s. The hiatus is not surprising: the format of four competitors getting 60 seconds to speak on a subject "without repetition, hesitation or deviation" is hardly visual. Or so you might imagine. The first episode, which finds host Nicholas Parsons overseeing Paul Merton, Sue Perkins, Graham Norton and Phill Jupitus, reveals much about the panellists you might otherwise miss, notably Jupitus's genuine frustration at his own inability to avoid repetition.

Paul Merton on his return to stand-up

Paul Merton is renowned on Have I Got News for You as the cool-as-a-cucumber comic that never gets rattled and always comes back with a dry laser-guided joke.

But he's terrified returning to stand-up for the first time in 13 years as part of a new scripted tour opening in Scotland.

It's been a Radio 4 article of faith for 45 years. So the Beeb is celebrating the birthday of Just A Minute by sticking it on TV. Call it a midlife crisis if you like, because it's hard to see the point. The strengths and weaknesses of the radio version remain. Nicholas Parsons - who looks surprisingly nervous for such a trouper - still warms the main chair. Paul Merton, Sue Perkins, Phill Jupitus and Graham Norton make up a textbook panel. And everything's exactly the same. So why not just stick to the special anniversary versions of the radio show? Could it be that Just A Minute is really easy to transfer, has a guaranteed audience and can be passed off as 'new comedy'? We hope not. Still, on the plus side, you could ignore the pictures and still listen to it while doing the ironing.

Forty-five years after its invention, Just a Minute is taking its singular mix of the clever and the silly to India for two shows. The location, the Mumbai Comedy Store, changed the whole feel of the programme. Over here, it tends to take place in halls, where the laughter echoes; in the Comedy Store, the audience sounded like it was almost on top of the performers (Paul Merton and Marcus Brigstocke plus domestic talent Anuvab Pal and Cyrus Broacha), in what felt like a bearpit.

The Indians, in a sense, are ahead of us. Just a Minute took off there when it was on the BBC World Service, and it's played by young Indian professionals at "JaM sessions". This gave Pal and Broacha a leg-up as far as the rules were concerned, though neither could quite get the hang of the "repetition" bit.

The subjects were well chosen - they included "cultural exchanges" and "colonial India" - which elicited the following from Pal: "General Malcolm Muggeridge of the 1st Jaipur Infantry liked to wear his breeches and go for deep swims." There followed a long, smutty riff from the assembled cast about what "deep swims" might be a euphemism for - suggesting that the cultural divide between ourselves and our former subjects isn't very wide at all.

The 45th anniversary of the quaint Radio 4 panel show, in which contestants must talk for 60 seconds on any given subject "without repetition, hesitation or deviation", sees it honoured with a first television outing for 13 years. The opener of 10 nightly episodes calls upon TV quiz staples Paul Merton and Phill Jupitus to provide the deadpan humour, alongside Sue Perkins and Graham Norton, while long-standing host Nicholas Parsons marshalls proceedings with a boyish grin that belies his 88 years.