Simon Cowell

If Me and Mrs Jones, this crummy yummy mummy sitcom doesn't in itself herald the end of the universe, it does make you question what 14bn years of cosmic existence has achieved.

After the desperate opener, the humane hope was that, contrary to the second law of thermodynamics, things could only get better. But the second episode proved that hope to be vainer than Simon Cowell.

Character may not always be destiny in real life, but it is in real comedy. And like far too many British comedies, Me and Mrs Jones, a school gate farce, has no characters. Instead it has "types": the hapless single mother, the neighbourhood busybody, the humourless Nordic sex bomb.

To watch Sarah Alexander as Mrs Jones work herself into a mirthless fluster is to long to see Wendy Craig in a rerun of Carla Lane's 70s sitcom Butterflies, a yearning I have never previously felt in danger of experiencing. Yet say what you will about Craig's Ria, she was drawn from an active imagination rather than an exhausted comic trope.

The stock ciphers in Me and Mrs Jones possess no animating truth and therefore inspire no sympathy - the paradox of comedy being that you have to feel for people before you can laugh at them. Whatever pity was mustered went on the actors, whose lines were so limp that it seemed like a cruel and unusual punishment to leave them dangling without the protection of a laughter track.

In historical terms, the demise of the laughter track must be hailed as a positive development in British sitcom. For is there not something creepily controlling about being prompted to laugh? Apart from anything else, it denies us the basic human right of spontaneity.

But with the sort of sitcoms that British television churns out with mystifying regularity, the laughter track performs a vital practical role. It provides the only sign that these shows are comedies. Take that away and you're left with an extreme version of Brechtian alienation, only without the intellectual kudos.

When, for example, Inca the Nordic sex bomb said: "I am Swedish", you could detect immediately afterwards a ghostly appeal to a notional sense of humour - the empty beat where the laughter was supposed to go. Call it the silence of comic entropy, this was the haunted sound of a joke that had not just died but decomposed into absolute nothingness.

David Walliams in Britain's Got Talent deal

David Walliams has bagged a new two-year deal worth £800,000 to appear on Britain's Got Talent - after Simon Cowell said he couldn't do without his new pal.

When comedian, actor and author David Walliams was last on Ross's show earlier this year he was very funny; his incessant jibes nearly caused his Britain's Got Talent boss Simon Cowell to walk off set. But expect a more subdued Walliams here as he talks about his autobiography in which he admits that he has attempted suicide several times. I'm a Celebrity... winner turned TV presenter Stacey Solomon also guests and the music is by Ed Sheeran.

The sitcom set among Birmingham's Muslim community has provoked a rash of complaints to the BBC, mostly regarding disrespect towards the Qur'an. Few mention the BBC'' offence against comedy itself in commissioning yet another sitcom constructed almost entirely from clichés. Tonight Mr Khan (Adil Ray) becomes the Simon Cowell of Sparkhill in seeking a star performer for the local mosque's call to prayer.

Vic & Bob: We blackmailed Simon Cowell

As part of Funny Fortnight, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer return to Channel 4 with an anarchic new show bringing together Eddie Izzard, Simon Cowell and Dr Christian Jessen. They kindly agreed to tell RT.com all about it, and left us more confused than ever...

A well-worn spoof format, with roving reporters unearthing grainy footage of lookalikes cavorting riotously in the guise of the rich and famous. So, we see Camilla and Kate getting drunk in a studio, Simon Cowell sitting on a toilet seat carefully layered with black loo paper and Prince William at an all-night garage, in an abysmal scene featuring a turbanned sales clerk who is a throwback to Amusing Asian stereotypes of the 70s. If you love the worst elements of BBC3, you'll love this. The rest of you will not.

Vic and Bob returned to our screens, with another one-off show for the birthday celebrations. Vic & Bob's Lucky Sexy Winners - a quiz show, at least technically - opened with our trouserless hosts sporting platform heels and dancing as ever, although this time literally, to the beat of their own drums. Then a cardboard cutout of Simon Cowell as drawn by Reeves atop a pair of human legs kicked a lever to activate the clock and guests Chelsee Healey, Thomas Turgoose and Eddie Izzard ("Occupation?" "Spinster") competed to answer questions such as "Where is Antony Worrall Thompson - the moistest of the TV chefs - housed when not on TV?" and win prizes that included an energy drink and some talcum powder in a jar ("In a jar, in a jar, in a jar!"). It occurred to me that, unless I blinked and missed it, Reeves and Mortimer were the only things missing (Harry Hill's TV Burp titles got a brief look-in) from the festival of bonkers Britishness that was the Olympics opening ceremony. Danny Boyle probably couldn't find a frame of their work from the moment The Smell Of ... kicked off that wouldn't have finally tipped the whole fabulous, precariously balanced thing over into outright frothing madness incomprehensible across the globe.

Like Hill, you either find them funny or you don't and the paltry resources of the written word cannot hope to transport you from the latter to the former camp. Even the news that AWT is housed in Glasgow University Hospital when not on TV may not sway you. But I laughed till I cried and begged whatever god is in charge of these things for a whole Lucky Sexy winning series. I type till then with fingers crossed.

Ken Dodd criticises Punch and Judy reboot

Comedian Ken Dodd says the use of contemporary figures such as Boris Johnson, Simon Cowell and Prince Harry in a new version of Punch and Judy is "awful".

David Wallliams: Wife doesn't like me talking to Cowell

Britain's Got Talent judge David Walliams admits he has struck up a "bromance" with show boss Simon Cowell - to the disgust of his stunning wife Lara Stone.

Brian Conley says he prefers performing on stage to TV

All-rounder Brian Conley has revealed he can't watch Britain's Got Talent because he thinks Simon Cowell copied one of his shows for it.