Ross Noble

Free-wheeling Geordie comic Ross Noble, award-winning R&B singer Jamelia and the academic and journalist Germaine Greer are Frank Skinner's guests on tonight'' edition of this long-running comedy show. They give good value for money, campaigning for a wide range of items to be sent to their doom in Room 101 - including health and safety, actors, text speak and folk dancing.

A special edition of the show as it hits its 45th birthday. "Am I really that old?" asks 88-year-old host Nicholas Parsons, thinking back to when the series started in 1967, and has to answer himself with an honest "Yes".

Well, old it might be but it's lost none of its wit and edge. Ross Noble is particularly hilarious here - although not very good at scoring actual points.

If I may say this without repetition, hesitation or deviation, a radio institution celebrates an anniversary on Monday as the splendid Nicholas Parsons introduces the panel show he has chaired since its inception in just a minute.

Doubtless the shades of such esteemed departed panellists as Clement Freud and Kenneth Williams will be issuing some hollow challenges from the wings as panellists Ross Noble, Jenny Eclair, Gyles Brandreth and Paul Merton are asked to pontificate on subjects given out in the original series back in 1967, from "Why I Wear a Top Hat" to "Knitting a Cablestitch Jumper".

Will Ross Noble as a killer clown have us in stitches?

Geordie comedian Ross Noble recently broke into films with The Hunt For Tony Blair, appearing as an Old Labour trade unionist. So he's returned from the dead to frighten the kids once already, but in a new film called Stitches he'll star as a clown killed at a children's party who's back for vengeance.

Wrapped up in colourful scarves, Stephen Fry and company are in particularly jovial mood tonight for this festive edition of the esoteric quiz. Answering questions on such subjects as ice and prawns, Ross Noble, Sean Lock, Brian Blessed and Alan Davies prove hilarious company as they reel off a number of anecdotes. For the comedian's quick wits, though, the most amusing moment comes from Lock falling off his chair.

Stephen Fry and his contestants don colourful scarves for a festive edition of the highbrow quiz show that loves a bit of low humour. Brian Blessed gets into the spirit on the subject of ice with some windy anecdotes about the Yeti and his love of husky dogs.

Sean Lock and Ross Noble are the quick wits riffing on Icelandic banking and prawns, while host Fry adopts his stern headmaster persona whenever his "class" seem to be having too much fun.

Like many teachers in the old-fashioned mould, though, he finds his own enjoyment peeking at the sight of one of his boys being humiliated... tonight, it's Lock falling off a chair.

Ross Noble's video essay on stand-up comedy

We caught up with Ross Noble to talk about his new DVD The Headspace Cowboy we quizzed him all about where stand-up is and where it's going.

If you've ever failed to work out the precise purpose of QI, it may help to think of it as in some respects a kind of televisual equivalent of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. The show's very pointlessness, unless you're someone with ambitions to bore for Britain on arcane knowledge, is a great part of its charm. Anyway, this year's Christmas episode finds Stephen Fry posing questions on the theme of ice to Brian Blessed, Sean Lock, Ross Noble and Alan Davies.

ITV2's sketch-mistress Katy Brand introduces highlights of the 2011 Laughs in the Park open-air comedy event held in St Albans, which include the event's founding father, Eddie Izzard, fresh from becoming the first solo comedian to perform a gig at the Hollywood Bowl. He and fellow headliner Ross Noble share a gift for meandering absurdity, whether directed at God, the Romans or Bono, but by all accounts the brilliant Irish comic Tommy Tiernan upstaged them both: look out for his bit about mosques and their lack of chairs.

For the first time in six years, The Comic Strip, the comedy which was broadcast on Channel 4's opening night, returns with a film noir spoof on former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Stephen Mangan played the PM, who finds himself on the run from Inspector Hutton (Robbie Coltrane), who arrests him for a murder Blair claims he didn't commit. During his attempt to escape the law he pushes an Old Labour tramp off a train (Ross Noble), kills a spookily accurate predictor of the future (Rik Mayall) and ends up in bed with Baroness Thatcher (Jennifer Saunders).

This episode features some great performances, from Mangan as Blair, Saunders as Thatcher, Harry Enfield as an "f-word" fuelled Alistair Campbell (still think Malcolm Tucker is the better, ruder and funnier spin doctor), and Nigel Planer's spooky reincarnation of Peter Mandelson. There were plenty of laughs to be had, especially if you're a film noir fan; for example, Rik Mayall's Professor Predictor is a clear parody of Mr. Memory from Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.

There were also actual moments of tension. My favourite bit in the episode featured Blair in Thatcher's mansion, preparing to change for dinner and being told by the butler Tebbit (John Sessions) not to look in a cupboard. Blair obviously does and out of it pops the rotting skeleton body of Dennis Thatcher.

If I were to have any complaints about this programme, it would be that Tony Blair doesn't seem to be that much of a current satirical subject to mock. Not only is Blair no longer Prime Minister, he wasn't even our last Prime Minister. We've had two different people in the position since he's left. If this was made while Blair was still in power it would have had a much bigger impact.