Stuart Jeffries

Comedy Prom review

If we can get through this review without provoking Tim Minchin to write a song about it, we'll have achieved some kind of closure. Six summers ago, when a Guardian critic eviscerated the kohl-hogging Aussie Tom Lehrer's Edinburgh debut, Minchin retorted by tearing the review into bits in a tune you can still hear on YouTube.

And now a blasphemous confession: Psychoville (BBC2) isn't for me. It's comedy horror for the Ocado demographic, as scary as finding your delivery man has broken the bottle of balsamic vinegar en route, a gross-out as entertaining as a commodified trick-or-treat soiree in the suburbs. A clown with Down's syndrome, anyone? Dawn French pasting mashed swede into a woman's paralysed mouth? An officious librarian haunted by a dancing spectre? Thanks, but no.

Psychoville warrants comparison with Gigglebiz, Justin Fletcher's sometimes scary sketch show. Think of Fletcher's truly menacing Dinah Lady or his crazed fitness fanatic Keith Fit. Genuinely terrifying - and with a punchline rate that Psychoville's mighty writers can only look on and despair. And that's on CBeebies. Mind you, I did like the way French got stabbed with a pencil. She'd been asking for that.

Bill Bailey: 'It's genius, evil genius'

Bill Bailey has been described as the world's seventh greatest comedian. But he's a lot better than that. Who else could make inverse femtobarns (look it up) funny?

Iannucci: 'Now is not the time for a crap opposition'

Armando Iannucci, creator of The Thick of It, is Britain's greatest political satirist in recent years. So, when is he going to sink his teeth into the coalition?

Review Stephen Fry Live

What the show needed was an infusion of punchlines. Only at the end did he unleash two worth the name, and they were both Tommy Cooper's.

Frankie Boyle lays into celebrity memoirs

Comedian Frankie Boyle berates publishers for producing 'crap' celebrity memoirs. Meanwhile his own is a bestseller.

Daddy, I made up the jokes

Suburban sitcom Outnumbered could easily have flopped. Instead its child stars are up against Charlie Brooker for a comedy award.

Chris Addison: Into the bear pit

The Thick of It is a savage send-up of Labour, politics and spin. So would its star feel uneasy inside Parliament?

Will the BBC ever work out what to do with Norton?

Since arriving at the BBC on a huge salary in 2005, Graham Norton has staggered from one dud show to the next. What does this tell us about him - and his employers?

A bout of Fry v Laurie

On Sunday two of Britain's national treasures, whose surnames have been entwined in the public consciousness since their comedy show A Bit of Fry and Laurie first aired on BBC Two in 1988, compete for our affections. At 9pm, you can see Stephen Fry as a Norfolk solicitor in Kingdom. Meanwhile at the same time on Sky 1, you could watch House, starring Hugh Laurie as a medical genius. It's time to decide who is better - Fry or Laurie?