Simon Cowell

Michael McIntyre thought they wanted a BGT contestant

Britain's Got Talent judge Michael McIntyre initially thought Simon Cowell was asking him to be a contestant, not an adjudicator, on the show.

Michael McIntyre talks to Chris Evans about BGT

Comedian Michael McIntyre talks to Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2 about his new judging role on Britain's Got Talent.

On The Chris Evans Breakfast Show he described how Simon Cowell had "wooed" him for the job.

Impressionists Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson are accomplished performers but their material struggles to match their talent. There's fun to be had in the unlikely relationship between chirpy John Craven and Stephenson's deadpan Lady Gaga, but yet another send-up of Simon Cowell's taste in trousers is just lazy.

Peep Show Series 7 review

With a script that will have you laughing from start to finish, Peep Show is one of the few jewels left in a TV crown which sits rather disturbingly on Simon Cowell's head these days.

Ken Dodd on comedy, Simon Cowell - and retirement

In a rare interview, the veteran comedian tells Stephen Smith why, even at 82, he has no plans to quit.

At some point in the recent past, James Corden decided to combine being a fine actor with an alternative career as TV's new King of Blokes. James Corden's World Cup Live is one of the consequences.

Borrowing flagrantly from the formats of countless shows before it - Sky's Soccer AM, TGI Friday and Baddiel and Skinner being the most obvious - James Corden's World Cup Live is a blend of comedy, chat and banter performed before a braying studio audience that has been as ruthlessly drilled as the Arsenal offside trap under George Graham. (Soccer-phobic readers: rest assured that this is my last torturous football analogy.)

"A good point!" pronounced James Corden on England's one-all draw in their opening World Cup match against the USA. Either Corden hadn't watched the same toothless, largely clueless, and hilariously calamitous performance I'd endured, or he had a live party to host in its aftermath and wasn't going to let dour reality intrude on the festivities.

In an eclectic choice of guests for the opening show, the sofa was shared by Simon Cowell, who needs no introduction, and Katy Perry, who soon will, should Russell Brand dump her as his fiancee.

Had England beaten the USA I'm sure Katy's combination of kookiness and volume would have charmed the watching nation, but as things stood, her presence was overwhelmingly irritating and pointless.

She was, however, preferable to the intolerably smug Cowell, there to plug his World Cup single. "I'm going to get it played in the England dressing room at half time" he boasted. As if the team didn't have enough to worry about.

But the show sinks or swims on the abilities of its star. Quick-witted and affable, Corden performed heroics in keeping up the show's momentum through its modest 20-minute duration. James Corden's World Cup Live could yet prove good fun, it just needs to loosen up and relax into its run - a bit like the England football team, in fact.

Amanda Holden on her new comedy series Big Top

As she begins a new role away from Britain's Got Talent we talk to Amanda Holden about her new sitcom, Simon Cowell - and how her tiny daughter is behaving like a mini-celebrity.

Malcolm is to the God-like The Thick Of It what Jedward are to The X Factor. As in the love-to-hate-to-love element that keeps us coming back for more. Want to know how Simon Cowell feels when he looks at Jedward running rampant across his carefully controlled kingdom? Over to Thick Of It punchbag Glenn, who caught the sentiment perfectly: 'I feel like I'm in a therapy group being run by my own rapist.'

It's lines like that, flowing like twisted rivers of bile over characters drowning in their desperation, that lift The Thick Of It head and shoulders above the comedy competition. Sometimes the plot twists can tie you up in knots and this week the moral maze surrounding a people's champion being used as a political puppet pretty much ruptured my blind alley. But then a clueless PR with the social skills of a baboon who explained his presence thus - 'I'm the Nazi guard... only in a non-gassy way' - had me howling too much to care.

Finally, Channel 4's Comedy Showcase returns - essentially The X Factor for sitcoms. Every week there's a new pilot, with the most popular being commissioned for a whole series - before, presumably, having a nervous breakdown and being admitted to the Priory.

First up for the phone vote was Campus - the new project from the Green Wing team: essentially Green Wing but set in a red-brick university, not a hospital. The show is already so well-formed that finding it having to audition for a series seems bizarre - like Patti Smith turning up to an X Factor audition in Cardiff, and doing Piss Factory to a gob-smacked Simon Cowell.

The writer/director/producer Victoria Pile has two trademark techniques: creating worlds where a horrible, dark surreality keeps oozing through the cracks; and characters who take childlike gestures to extremes - walking past a shelf and pushing all the books off with a triumphal air, stealing lipstick from a handbag and putting it on during a conversation, shouting "Shut!" at a door that's already shutting.

Although, like Green Wing, Campus works as an ensemble of freaks, perhaps the most intriguing mutant is Vice Chancellor Jonty de Wolfe (Andy Nyman). Initially, he looks like the weakest character - a small, bumptious David Brent clone who keeps attempting Jamaican patois to make a point. But by the end of the show he has turned into a more sinister version of the shopkeeper in Mr Benn - wandering around the library in a floor-length taffeta ballgown, urging depressed students to commit suicide and, on one occasion, simply disappearing in the middle of a monologue, as if it were a Las Vegas floor-show, leaving his English lecturer Matthew Beer (Joseph Millson) holding a madly clattering clockwork monkey, and his jaw.

The 2007 Comedy Showcase resulted in series commissions for The Kevin Bishop Show, Plus One and Free Agents, from which The Kevin Bishop Show has made it to a second series - making it very much the Leona Lewis of the enterprise. But Campus is far superior stuff to Kevin Bishop. It makes Kevin Bishop look like ... David Sneddon. Campus - it's a yes from me. I'm putting you through to Boot Camp.

Return of the hilarious comedy sketch show in which Kevin Bishop takes potshots at Gok Wan and Harry Hill.

Along with two packets of Munchies and a strawberry Nesquik, one of our Friday night treats is this smashing comedy, which flicks between spoofs of TV shows, films and adverts. Somehow, the previous series managed to win nothing at the British Comedy Awards, despite several nominations, and this travesty will hopefully be righted with Kevin's new potshots at the likes of Simon Cowell.