Paul Merton

Paul Merton on European eccentricities

Paul Merton reveals the strangest aspects of his new European travelogue for Five.

Women have always been under-represented on Have I Got News For You (last weeks appearance by frock-wearing artist Grayson Perry notwithstanding). So its great to see the comedienne and actress, and the tallest woman in comedy, Miranda Hart taking her first spin in the presenters chair.

Already a familiar face from comedies like Angelos, Hyperdrive and playing the cleaning lady in Not Going Out, Miranda is now going to have her very own sitcom based on her Radio 2 series. It will be starting soon on BBC2.

Shes been on Have I Got News For You's panel before, so has no trouble holding her own against captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton.

Mock The Week does a sterling job at, er, mocking the week but we still have a special place in our hearts for its televisual older brother, which returns tonight for an astonishing 38th series. Helping Ian Hislop and Paul Merton with the mirth will be satire's latest poster boy Charlie Brooker and axed Strictly judge Arlene Phillips, and Martin Clunes is back as guest host, a role he's made a good fist of before... though it beats me why they can't get someone permanent in the main chair.

There were real laughs to be had, and plenty of them, on Just a Minute (Radio 4, Sunday), the last in the current series. The mood was already rather hysterical ("When I look at that beautiful masculine form I can't help but think of King Kong" said Paul Merton of host Nicholas Parsons) when Gyles Brandreth was given the topic of "pretentious vocabulary". Off he went, unstoppably, unleashing a torrent of verbal flourishes. So unstoppable, in fact, that they let him go beyond the full minute. Moments later, Brandreth was emboldened to assert that he has no hair on his body at all. "Show us your chest," suggested Parsons. "Dear Lord," muttered Pauline McLynn. "Off, off, off!" chanted the audience. "What on earth," asked Graham Norton, "has happened to Radio 4?"

Just a Minute gets animated in BBC comedy site refresh

Flights of fancy from BBC Radio 4's panel game Just a Minute are to be given an animated spin on the BBC's new-look comedy website - part of a major move towards web-only comedy commissions. Comedy indie Angel Eye has asked animators to illustrate monologues by panellists such as Paul Merton and the late Clement Freud, with a brief to reflect the often surreal avenues taken.

Hislop: 'Merton never liked Deayton'

Ian Hislop has said that he used to get on with Angus Deayton but fellow Have I Got News For You panellist Paul Merton never liked the host.

TV's best topical panel show by a mile returns for an unlikely 37th series. In TV terms the show may be an old-timer, but its satirical teeth can still leave the kind of wound that must keep its libel lawyers busy. That's thanks to the nimble wit of team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, still the oddest of TV couples and still adept at ripping the events of the week to comedy shreds.

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson have been writing together for 60 years and given us classic comedies. If they never write another word we are all in their debt. Radio 2 had a good idea to celebrate their partnership by recreating some of their old scripts for today's new comedy stars. The last in the series was Paul Merton in the role Tony Hancock made famous, The Blood Donor.

Actually, it was written for Arthur Lowe so, in theory, it should have passed easily into another voice. Unfortunately, it didn't. Merton sounded as if he were reading. So did June Whitfield's daughter, Suzy Aitchison, playing the nurse, the role her mother took so memorably 48 years ago. Why? It wasn't the script or the players. It's the art of good comedy production that's gone missing. The technical process has grown easier. The making of words into magic remains a tricky art.

The final programme marking Galton and Simpson's 60-year writing partnership is a new version of one of their most famous works. Originally written for Tony Hancock, The Blood Donor is regarded as a comedy classic, so it's a brave man who would step into Hancock's shoes and take on what is pretty much a perfect piece of comedy writing.

Here Paul Merton takes the Hancock role and, despite seeming a little un-easy at times, comes about as close to anyone as carrying it off.

The script has been tweaked a bit to bring it up to date, but none of the memorable lines have been lost. And in an affectionate nod to the past, Suzi Aitchison takes the role of the nurse - a part played by her mother June Whitfield in the original 48 years ago.

When Paul Merton performed in some rejigged Galton and Simpson comedies on ITV in the late 1990s, he did attempt some of the classic Hancock's Half Hour/Hancock episodes, but wisely steered clear of the classic Blood Donor. No such luck here, as possibly the most well-known episode of Tony Hancock's sitcom stars Merton in the last of this series of radio adaptations. All in all, it's been an odd series - the delivery and content often sounding antiquated and jarring with some of the contemporary updates.