Stephen Fry

Gay haters tipped Stephen Fry over the edge

Troubled Stephen Fry was in Africa filming a series about gay-hating bigots when he tried to kill himself.

Stephen Fry, Russell Brand and the caring revolution

As Stephen Fry has shown, comedians are seizing the mic from the traditional media and doing it their way. The caring, sharing revolution starts here.

Top 20 comedy shows in London - June

Featuring Stephen Fry, Aziz Ansari, Bill Bailey, Stewart Lee's alter-ego, Reggie Watts, charity fundraisers, Banana Cabaret, the Funny Side, and loads more...

Stephen Fry figure unveiled in Norwich

A figure of Stephen Fry, designed by children, has been unveiled in Norwich.

Stephen Fry to curate Royal Opera House festival

Stephen Fry is to curate this year's Deloitte Ignite festival at the Royal Opera House exploring the work of the Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner.

Stephen Fry turns himself into an app

The QI presenter and proficient Twitter user has gone virtual to broadcast his thoughts to the nation's smart phones.

Taking a lead from 2010's Frost On Satire, Sir David takes a look at another endangered comedy format, the sketch show. Charting the last 50 years of wanton skittery, Frost speaks to masters of shows past such as Stephen Fry, Ronnie Corbett and Michael Palin, taking in the highs and lows of the format. No preview tapes were available, so whether we'll be treated to the notoriously barbed "Timmy Williams Coffee Time" sketch from Moty Python's Flying Circus, a barely disguised pop at imperial-phase Frost himself, we have yet to find out.

The best contacts book in entertainment gets dusted off once more as David Frost recruits Michael Palin, Stephen Fry, Michael Grade et al to look at the rise - and perhaps fall - of the sketch show. The question posed at the outset - has the sketch show had its day? - is a pertinent one, although not answered in the 15-minute taster we were able to see.

Still, we can promise plenty of clips, both unfamiliar (some lovely corpsing from the early days of live variety shows) and over-familiar (Andre Preview, The Frost Report's class sketch). With any luck, a very watchable primer to a comedy format that should ideally be as easy to watch as it apparently is hard to master.

Cartoonist Ronald Searle's naughty public schoolgirls are back - this time rebooted for the 21st century. So as well as the sexy sixth formers, the rabble of lacrosse-stick waving young'uns are now split into cliques such as geeks and emos. Despite a cast over-crammed with the likes of Russell Brand and Stephen Fry, Ealing Studios' kidult comedy could never rival the golden 1950s black-and-white classics starring Alastair Sim and Joyce Grenfell. But try not to compare them and it is a jolly enough, if surprisingly 'safe', watch - no Asbos here, just girlish high spirits. It's worth seeing just to catch Rupert Everett, in headscarf and tweeds, as headmistress Camilla Fritton - think a mix of Ab Fab's Patsy and the former Mrs Parker-Bowles. His seduction of Colin Firth's nervous school inspector is even more of a hoot than your French teacher sitting on a whoopee cushion.