Rufus Hound

Rufus Hound vents anger at DS forums

Rufus Hound launched a rant about the Digital Spy forums backstage at the British Comedy Awards on Saturday night.

Rufus Hound to become a father again

Rufus Hound has revealed that he and his wife are expecting another baby.

Robert Llewellyn's online show comes to TV. The premise is simplicity itself: Llewellyn drives a guest around in his car and has a nice chat. He picks up comedians Rufus Hound and Jason Manford (who uses this as a money-saving way to get dropped off at his job at The One Show). There's no dangerous driving, and the only tension comes when they wait for a traffic light to change. It's pleasant with no attempt to "sex it up". The opposite, thankfully, of car crash television.

"A chat show in my motor," is how Robert Llewellyn (Red Dwarf) describes his series. A hit on the web, the show now makes its TV debut on Dave. Llewellyn is a pleasant enough chap, sitting behind the wheel of his Toyota Prius, making small talk with his passenger, but is there mileage in their chummy chats? No. The fact that his first guests are The One Show's Jason Manford and comic Rufus Hound says it all.

We must be nearing the point of critical mass at which there are more comedy panel shows than there are comedians. Argumental attempts, with intermittent success, to split the difference between Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week, by getting teams of the usual suspects to debate topics suggested by John Sergeant. Tonight, captains Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound are joined, respectively, by comics Will Smith and Jimmy Carr. Subjects include sweatshops, face transplants, reality TV and homosexuality.

Round 7: Defeated by the posh gits

Folks, I'm not going to lie to you, I've never been a huge fan of Osama Bin Laden.

My Funniest Year may well give you the longest night of yours, though in putting this two-hour programme on at 10 at night, Channel 4 is clearly hoping that alcohol will already have done its bit to erode our judgement. It's classic slump television, the sort of thing you watch because there's nothing else on and your volition is lying on the floor somewhere, underneath a pizza box. The concept is insultingly lazy. Hire a comedian to stitch together a clip show along the lines of I Love the 80s, but take the word "love" out of the title so that he or she can slag everything off. This week it was Rufus Hound reading the autocue - a gamily flavoured comedian at the best of times, but one who can be funny in the right setting. He wasn't here, rarely rising above the level of pub abuse. The lines followed a formula: mention event from 2000, think of feebly insulting metaphor, try and stiffen it up with a heavily stressed vulgarity. Thus: "That river of fire looked like the funeral of the world's shittest Viking", "Castaway was like a microcosm of an island full of dicks" and Heather Mills described as "always on the hunt for treasure like a Long John Silver with tits". Fortunately for him, the year in question contained two moments that proved television can sink lower than this - Rebecca Loos manually pleasuring a pig and Richard Blackwood evacuating his bowels on camera. Alongside those clips, My Funniest Year looked almost classy.

My Funniest Year 2000 review

A few years ago this would be the sort of clip show fare Jimmy Carr would be fronting (with the jokes being pretty much the same) but Rufus Hound does a decent enough job in the stand-up role. He just needs a better platform than this to show off his talents and one that doesn't resort to obvious jokes about Big Brother contestants.

Channel 4's answer to the Beeb's hit stand up extravaganza Live At The Apollo may not have the glitz and glamour of their competitor's production, but they have a terrific opening act in Rufus Hound. Playing in front of a live audience at London's Hackney Empire, the comic deconstructs the year 2000 in a superb set that takes in everything from Big Brother to Brad and Jen. Was it really ten years ago?