Stacey Solomon

There is so much wrong with 'Big Fat Quiz Of The Year' - can it really survive?

The annual comedy quiz has been a Christmas staple since 2004 - but its childish one-liners and macho atmosphere mean it struggles to feel fresh.

Jimmy Carr returns as the sarky quizmaster in this bumper edition of his anarchic celeb gameshow. Guests Claudia Winkleman, Nish Kumar, Joe Lycett, Alan Carr, Stacey Solomon and Jonathan Ross are all put through their paces in an eccentric celebration of the past 10 years.

Unhateable celebrity lovebirds Joe Swash and Stacey Solomon are the contestants as the gameshow returns. To win cash for charity, Swash and Stace must judge their own and each other's attractiveness, in comparison to random punters and surprise guests. Mildly offensive, but good-humoured and at least it sticks to faces: someone somewhere is surely cooking up a nightmarish cross between this and Naked Attraction.

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.

Such is the dearth of new programming during the Olympics that I am obliged to review Mad Mad World, a show well into its run which I had rather hoped to avoid ever setting eyes on.

My low expectations were met in full. Mad Mad World is yet another comedy panel show in an already saturated market that is more than happy to rehash other formats rather than attempt anything microscopically different. They even steal the funny buzzer noises as pioneered by QI.

The basic premise creaks with unoriginality and old age - aren't foreigners and their television shows funny? Clive James certainly thought so, three decades ago. Clips are exhumed, many already viral on the internet, and two teams make purportedly witty comments about them. Several of the rounds feature still photographs from news stories, which rather defeats the object of the exercise and suggests that any attempt at quality control was long since abandoned back in the pub where the idea was originally hatched.

Paddy McGuinness is the perfectly competent host, and the panellists make a decent fist of trying to make the show look unscripted. A sliver of spontaneity did infiltrate proceedings courtesy of guest Stacey Solomon, who was endearingly ditzy throughout, but even she could do little to lift the suffocating miasma of complacency engulfing the whole sorry enterprise.
"What is unique about this Venus de Milo?" asks McGuinness of a peculiar looking statue.

"Is it made of shit?" replies team captain Rufus Hound.

It was. But it certainly wasn't the only thing that evening.

Given the success of gloriously trashy dating programme Take Me Out, it's no surprise to see its presenter Paddy McGuinness at the reins of this equally cheesy panel show. Comedians Rhys Darby and Rufus Hound head two celebrity-packed teams for a light-hearted quiz based on news stories and TV clips from across the globe. This week's motley crew include comic Stephen K. Amos, This Morning host Eamonn Holmes and ditzy X Factor graduate Stacey Solomon.