Stephen Merchant

He's the man they turned to when Brucey was too ill to present Strictly. He was caught taking drugs in Extras and entertained Bubbles DeVere in Little Britain. This year, to mark his 80th birthday, he'll have his own Christmas Day sketch show. Yes, it can only be unlikely national treasure Ronnie Corbett, the short comedian with the long career, charted here with loving input from his hordes of admirers including Miranda Hart, Rob Brydon, Stephen Merchant, Matt Lucas and Michael Palin.

Stephen Merchant goes on date with Australian beauty

Stephen Merchant looks like the cat that got the cream as he goes on cinema date with Australian beauty Rose Byrne.

When a new sitcom gets a big tick from comedy aristocrats like Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, you approach it with enormous expectations. And while PhoneShop includes some sharp lines and clever ideas, it's also irritating, which blurs out much of the good stuff. Double act Ashley (Andrew Brooke) and Jerwayne (Javone Prince) both talk like Ali G, but have nothing especially funny to say. Their schtick is to bully the freshly recruited, drippy salesman, Christopher (Tom Bennett), who they call Newman. This quickly gets boring but their dynamic never evolves beyond lions-picking-on-an-antelope. If you can be bothered it might be worth one more look but at best this series opener feels like an ill-cast early draft.

Radio review: Chain Reaction

Stephen Merchant gets nervous before hero Jarvis Cocker.

Final show in the series. Stephen Merchant (last week's interviewee) talks to Jarvis Cocker about the disadvantages of wearing spectacles, being tall and gangly, rock festivals, rock idols and what really happened when the Pulp singer threw the contents of an ice bucket over Michael Jackson at the Brit Awards in 1996. It's on FM only because the special ecumenical Westminster Abbey Service of Evening Prayer, to be attended by both the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, is on Radio 4LW from 6.00-7.15pm. Edward Stourton (as so often this week) presents.

Harry Shearer, voice of evil Mr Burns and hapless Ned Flanders on The Simpsons, American comedian, writer, and radio host, chooses as his interviewee Stephen Merchant, co-writer of TV's The Office and Extras, more recently an actor, standup and 6 Music presenter. The resulting conversation is most entertaining, a rare glimpse of comedy back rooms, a snowball of reflection on what makes something funny, how jokes grow. Merchant on his youthful experiments with a radio station in a hedge is sublime, their thoughts on comedy as a control mechanism is a tonic.

Stephen Merchant interview

The Office's Stephen Merchant: "Ricky Gervais needs to eat more vegetables".

New Statesman Interview: Stephen Merchant

"With Ricky Gervais, it's like a marriage and a brotherhood"

Stephen Merchant: 'Gervais too lazy for US Office'

Stephen Merchant has joked that Ricky Gervais won't replace Steve Carell in the US version of The Office because he is too lazy.