Peter Jones (III)

Rarely asked questions - Sam Fletcher

If you like your comedy quirky and lo-fi Sam Fletcher is your man. In the past the Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Newcomer nominee and CBBC star has mixed (sort of) magic tricks with David Shrigleyish illustrations and crackpot inventions that would quickly get him thrown off of Dragon's Den. Which would be human giant Peter Jones and that lemon-faced woman's loss. Fletcher is back in Edinburgh with a new show to amuse and amaze his fans. Read his jolly answers and go and see his jolly funny show.

More live wittering to look forward to as McIntyre continues to flog his variety show, this week roping in Peter Jones from Dragons' Den to play his Send To All game, in which the comedian sends a text to Jones's entire contacts book to reap hilarious results. Elsewhere, there's "extreme flamenco" from fusion dance troupe Los Vivancos, music from Rod Stewart and James Morrison, pranks on members of the public and standup from Romesh Ranganathan.

Radio Times review

The comedy and science fiction worlds were robbed of a prodigious talent in 2001 when Douglas Adams died of a heart attack, aged just 49. His contributions to Doctor Who, literature, ecology and the internet are unique and impressive. But for me, his finest offering remains The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and specifically this radio version, first broadcast in 1978.

Where the Radio 4 series scored over subsequent outings on television and film was in its sublime cast (from Simon Jones's permanently bamboozled everyman, Arthur Dent, to Stephen Moore's lugubrious Marvin the Paranoid Android), and in allowing listeners to picture Adams's genuinely extraordinary ideas in their own minds.

In 1978 the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was already very much a known quantity, thanks to its sonic tailoring of the Time Lord's adventures on BBC One. Here, however, its engineers excelled themselves, weaving seductive and amusing soundscapes around the fantastical action.

Any comedy that begins with the end of the world is an instant attention-grabber, and Peter Jones's avuncular narration (as "The Book") is the perfect counterpoint to the ensuing craziness. Adams had a knack for wonderful character names, but stick with the series for Slartibartfast (one of veteran actor Richard Vernon's finest hours).

If you've never heard this before, I envy you. Hyperspace bypasses, Pangalactic Gargle Blasters and Shoe Event Horizons all jostle for attention in a planetary pot-pourri.

It's full of the kind of skewed, surreal humour and conceptual genius that would become Adams's calling card. And when Marvin laments, "Here I am, brain the size of a planet...", I often think of Adams's intellect in similar terms.

So long, Douglas, and thanks for all the fish.

Let's hope chatty Alan has been sharpening his tongue over the summer ready to welcome in the first batch of guests for his 11th series. There's plenty of juicy material for him to get stuck into, what with a quartet of Dragons - Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne, Deborah Meaden and new business top cat Kelly Hoppen - plus comedian Lee Evans, actress Keely Hawes and reheated X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne. He'll eat them all for breakfast. Rizzle Kicks provide the music.

More frothy fun from Alan Carr as the ninth series of his effervescent chat show continues. Tonight Carr will be camping it up with fellow comedian and Take Me Out presenter Paddy McGuinness and chatting to formidable Dragons' Den entrepreneurs Theo Paphitis, Deborah Meaden, Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones. Music comes from Britain's own Justin Bieber, teen pop star Conor Maynard, performing his new single Turn Around.

There was a time when Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse were on top of the comedy game. Enfield's Loadsamoney defined an era, while Kevin and Perry provided one of the great portrayals of male teenagerdom. Whitehouse's Fast Show, meanwhile, was the apotheosis of the sketch show, pounding viewers with catchphrases and lightning-quick vignettes. So it is such a shame to see what has become of them.

Enfield recently said "we're just doing stuff for people who don't watch much comedy, but might like us" - well, job half-done. Because anyone who does watch comedy wouldn't last two minutes with this. A Dragons' Den pastiche is nicely set up, with a particularly good impression of the smug Peter Jones, but it tails off, and feels like children acting in the playground. Similarly, are we really meant to find humour in two old boys in a gentlemen's club wondering whether David Cameron is "queer"? Comedy should inspire, infuriate, engage in some way; this just sends you to sleep. Already relegated from BBC1 to BBC2, how long can it be before it's dropped altogether?

After the high of last week's hilarious opener, I thought this episode was very flat overall. None of Sean Lock's flights-of-fancy left the ground, Jason Manford seemed to struggle for material, and the choice of guests wasn't very good. I'm not a fan of young standup Jack Whitehall, and while I find Josie Long strangely beguiling (it's her grinning, just-rolled-out-of-bed cuteness), she wasn't very funny here.

Peter Jones from Dragons' Den was subdued to begin with, but he warmed up in the second part -- and in doing so gave comedy ammo to the others about his millionaire lifestyle anecdotes. Fay Ripley wasn't a total loss because she got involved, but this episode was definitely slack and its content has already melted from my memory. You know it's a weak episode when a clip from the US version of Wife Swap (an irritating fat kid being denied junk food by his "swapped" mom) proved to be the highlight.

Previously seen on E4, this likeably juvenile sixth form sitcom might not be as cool as Skins but it is a million miles better than BBC3's similarly themed Coming Of Age.

It stars Simon Bird as Will, a borderline geek who's been forced to move from a private school to a slightly scary comprehensive after his parents split.

Rudge Park School is set in a rosetinted suburbia with no teenage pregnancies, drugs, knives or guns - just comedy bullies, raging hormones and a rich seam of American Pie-style mishaps.

It also stars Joe Thomas as Simon, who looks uncannily like a young Peter Jones from Dragons' Den.

Not great, not bad, but definitely in between - but why is it scheduled so late on a school night?

Bloody hell, it has been recommissioned! Amazing, really, considering how staggeringly painful Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's first series was.

Quality control has been cranked up a notch but I should warn you, Nelson Mandela is back.

Best reason to watch is a brilliant take on Dragons' Den. Harry is Deborah Meaden but the moment when Paul's Duncan Bannatyne leans forward to sneer at Harry's Peter Jones makes this worth investing in.

Any ad-libbed, improvised show requires a special skill from the players, and in a professional sense they are living dangerously. There was an occasion in Just a Minute when the subject was snapshots. Kenneth Williams was unhappy about one of my decisions, which went against him on this subject, and he began to harass me. Peter Jones and Derek Nimmo joined in, which added to the pressure. In an effort to bring them to order, I said: "I'm sorry Kenneth, you were deviating from snapshots, you were well away from snapshots. It is with Peter, snopshots, er snipshots, er snopshits . . . snop . . . snaps." The audience roared with laughter. I added: "I'm not going to repeat the subject. I think you know it . . . and I think I may have finished my career in radio."

QI, however much it tries to be subtly different, is part of a glorious tradition. When radio first presented panel shows they cast them from those with a proven intellectual background. This mold was broken in the early 1960s, when Jimmy Edwards devised a programme for the Home Service, with himself as chairman, called Does the Team Think?. The panellists were all well-known comedians, Tommy Trinder, Cyril Fletcher and others, who proved that comics were just as intelligent as academics, and usually much funnier.

QI is a direct descendant. And when you have Stephen Fry, and contestants such as Alan Davies, Hugh Laurie and Danny Baker, and a producer of the calibre of John Lloyd, the BBC must be on to a winner.