Paul Whitehouse

Bellamy's People was originally a very funny radio satire about radio phone-ins, a simple idea that nailed a whole host of subjects and bigotry. Transferring it to television has one innate and possibly insuperable problem: the pictures. Watching a radio show is not a lot more exciting than watching rocks grow. So they dispensed with the radio bit, just keeping the phone-in host, a forgettable lad who goes out to meet English characters, mostly played by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson in rubber prosthetics. They ran through the familiar gamut of their characters for no apparent reason except amusingly to enunciate and repeat familiar clichés. After half an hour, they stopped, which was a relief.

This is The Fast Show remade as Little Britain. It's the flaccid end of a series of strained stereotypical impressions that were once immensely funny and original, and are now annoying and repetitive and reminiscent of a time in your life when this was where real catchphrases came from. The whole genre of characters without purpose needs to be revitalised, retuned, rebored and recalled.

This Week's TV: Bellamy's People

Paul Whitehouse returns to form with a gentle spoof of the celebrity road trip that's packed with glorious loons.

Bellamy's People was created by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, elder statesmen of the comedy genre, and is a follow-up to their Radio 4 hit Down the Line. As its narrative mechanism, it has a phone-in host leaving his studio for a tour of the UK to explore the nature of the Brits. This allows for a gallery of characters to be displayed - two aged aristocratic sisters, one a Communist, the other a Nazi (shades of the Mitfords); a Muslim community leader whom no one in his community knows; an ageing rock star who thinks his younger self was a prat; two celebrity-struck, squeaking women in early middle age who form the phone-in host's fan club, and so on. Some trembled on the edge of being funny but all showed how hard it is to do caricatures well if you are not a talented mimic.

In interviews promoting Bellamy's People, Paul Whitehouse has revealed the show is largely improvised and, as a result, the filming process involved hour upon hour of talking rubbish, which had to be painstakingly sifted through in order to extract the funny bits. You can only wish they'd looked a bit harder because if what got served up as episode one is a selection of the best bits then the reject pile must be truly mind-numbing.

Bellamy's People has been talked up as a successor to The Fast Show and the theory looked promising: a spin-off from a spoof late-night Radio 4 phone-in, the cameras followed 'award winning' radio monkey Gary Bellamy escaping the darkness of his studio and hitting the road to meet the voices at the other end of the phone.

Enter Whitehouse, long-time collaborator Charlie Higson and a motley crew of comedy veterans to have a ball as a selection of crazy characters. And there was the hitch: from the Essex fat bloke trapped in his room to the batty old posh chap ('Oh, I've brought you into the wrong room') to the East End tough-nut gangster, every one of these 'characters' turned out to be constructed from cardboard cut-out clichés. Which wouldn't matter too much if they were funny but, with the exception of a gag about bedside panthers from the zoologically confused Lion of Harlesden, Early D ('they're black lions!'), it all fell horribly flat. Floating through the middle of it all was Rhys Thomas as Bellamy, whose contribution amounted to various shades of bemusement. Understandable, perhaps, but a bit of banter might have spiced things up.

Maybe it was Whitehouse and Higson taking elaborate revenge on the younger generation of comedians they feel alienated from. 'I did you, I did you right up!' was the closest we came to a catchphrase, courtesy of gor-blimey builder Martin Hole. Thomas could be forgiven for thinking the line was aimed at him.

Ten years after their last television outing together in The Last Ever Fast Show, Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson and Simon Day reunite for an ingenious and amiable new series of comedy character sketches. This time, they've added an extra comic dimension to their world of mouthy plasterers, former armed robbers and upper-class loons. All the characters here are avid listeners to a fictional radio programme hosted by an unworldly, feckless DJ, Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas).

With the kind of cringe-making narration that adorns many a celebrity-presented documentary ("Modern Britain is a sometimes bewildering mix of different cultures and too often we don't make the effort to find out what we really think about each other"), Bellamy travels the nation to meet his fans and paint a portrait of "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". There's 23-stone Graham Downes (Whitehouse) from Harlow, who surfs the net from bed: "Out there in cyberspace, you see, Gary, I can become weightless." Higson is excellent as a doddery Cirencester gent, Humphrey Milner, playing him with eerie realism. And Whitehouse is peerless both as a potty, Sloaney rock impresario called Ian Craig-Oldman, and as opinionated Martin Hole, a Page 3-loving decorator whose catchphrase is just waiting to worm its way into our daily parlance: "I done you there. I done you right up." It's an impressive new home for the comic brilliance of The Fast Show.

Bellamy's People is sensationally good. Reuniting Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson from The Fast Show and performed by a crack team of comic actors, the idea is that a self-satisfied young Radio 4 talkshow host, Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas), leaves his studio and goes walkabout to meet his listeners, who prove to be an astonishing variety of perfectly realised comic characters. They include a 23 stone (146 kg) man who never leaves his front room, an ageing rock impresario, a prim parish worker, an Asian community leader, a semi-reformed criminal and a couple of dotty aristocrats with a penchant for totalitarian regimes. Each character seems more accurate and colourful than the one before and the show relies entirely on observation rather than gags to generate its laughter.

It is only a minority of fans of popular Sheffield-based beat combo Pulp who believe that their late period, commercial flop album This Is Hardcore is actually their best work. They may be a minority, but they are correct.

There's probably a similarly sized minority who believe that Paul Whitehouse has done his best work since his biggest hit, The Fast Show. He was brilliant as the voiceover artist in Happiness, and Help was excellent until it fell victim to Chris Langham. He then worked on Radio 4's award-winning Down The Line with Charlie Higson, which saw hapless DJ Gary Bellamy deal with idiotic phone-in callers. It was so popular that it was bound to end up on TV. And here we are.

Given that the idiotic phone-in was their main target for satire, the transfer works surprisingly well. They've shifted aim from Radio Five (Live) to regional news and The One Show.

There's plenty to enjoy. In the improvised scenes, Rhys Thomas (Gary) retains a nice sense of glazed wonderment as he's confronted by characters. Yes, they're all a bit Little Britain - a big fat man, a crusty old pair of sisters and a market entrepreneur speaking deep patois. But some of them do have an edge - Mr Khan the community leader, who no one knows, in particular. And no one blacks up.

It's solid comedy. Not special, but comfortingly good. Comedy that you can sit on. And it's miles better than The Fast Show.

A few years ago, Radio 4 phone-in show Down The Line caused no end of controversy as the complaints flooded in, from listeners who hadn't quite cottoned on to the fact that it was a spoof. It's taken its time getting there but the character-based comedy show has finally arrived on TV, as Bellamy's People, in which the radio host Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) tracks down some of his more eccentric listeners.

But the most notable thing about the show is the men behind it - Bellamy's People marks the first TV collaboration in ten years of The Fast Show creators Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson. This time around we're promised a slightly quieter, more reflective show, and one more concerned with gentle social satire. But with a cast that also includes the likes of Simon Day and Amelia Bulmore, there should hopefully be some laughs in there as well. Let's just hope, given the combination of Paul Whitehouse and comedy characters, that the prosthetic makeup isn't as terrifying as in the Aviva ad where it looks like his face is melting.

Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson have reunited for a new comedy about life in modern Britain - and this is one TV comeback I'm delighted to see.

Self-regarding Gary Bellamy (Star Stories' Rhys Thomas) is an award-winning journalist with an award-winning radio show. Now he's been released from his cosy studio and given a TV series in which he'll travel across the country to meet his listeners and find out what makes them tick.

Although headed by stalwarts of The Fast Show, the humour is more in the vein of People Like Us, that genius series featuring the now disgraced Chris Langham. It spoofs genuine "celebrity meets the public" shows brilliantly, using ridiculous links such as: "Cirencester in Gloucestershire couldn't be more different from Harlesden".

The characters Gary meets are wonderfully eccentric, with some lovely performances by the likes of Simon Day, Lucy Montgomery and Felix Dexter. And, of course Charlie and Paul - although I can't help but watch Paul's performances and be reminded of his recent spate of insurance ads.

Characters range from a 23-stone man who lives in his bed to a deluded community leader who can't quite tell Gary what a community leader does. There's the screechy Trisha Webb, who runs Gary's 'Bellamy's Babes' fan club, and lovely old boy Humphrey Milner, a self-confessed silver surfer. But my favourites are a pair of posh old biddies, who made me laugh so suddenly and hard I almost snorted tea out of my nose.

Bellamy's People Review: Comedy For The People

Few of its characters are particularly memorable and it doesn't have the zip and zing of Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson's previous work.