Tim Key

Radio Times review

It's been more than three years since we last visited Croydon's gruesome twosome Jez (Robert Webb) and David Mitchell's Mark. The unscrupulous Jez was declaring himself to Mark's girlfriend Dobby in a field and Mark is still smarting pompously at the betrayal; so much so, in fact, that he has found a new flatmate, cruelly consigning Jez to a billet in druggie Super Hans's bathroom.

As we rejoin the action six months on from the regrettable field-gate, will Jerry (Tim Key) provide Mark with the requisite, er, fun with William Morris documentaries and reading nights in? It isn't long before Jez seeks to wheedle his way back home in what becomes a hilarious tug-of-love for Mark's affections (and spare room)....

Writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong clearly want to raise the bar in this final ever outing of the cult "point-of view" comedy, which started in 2003. The gags are rapier-sharp and, despite all the usual chaos, mayhem and silliness, there is some deft plotting at work here, too.

Matt King's Super Hans is also brought joyously to the fore and it's lovely to be reminded of what a fantastic (and integral) character he is in the peerless world of Peep.

Review: Kieran Hodgson's Tour De France Tour De Force

If all that wasn't enough to award this show five stars, we're pretty sure we heard Tim Key, sitting behind us, roar with laugher on numerous occasions. That's better than any award Edinburgh could give you.

Together is written by and stars Johnny Sweet; a performer who up to know I hadn't really rated which made this charming sitcom all the more surprising. Sweet plays Tom a rather kind-hearted if foolish guy whose sister (Katy Wix) is constantly setting him up on blind dates which go rather badly. During the episode Tom keeps encountering Ellen (Cara Theobold) a rather outspoken young woman whose ex-boyfriend Luke (Jaz Deol) is constantly trying to win her back. The problem with the first episode of a romantic comedy series is that we have to sit through a number of missed opportunities before the central couple hit it off. The missteps in the first episode of Together include Tom seeing Ellen naked at a life drawing class and later encountering a rather saucy couple as he tries to gatecrash a party she's attending. Although Sweet crafts several awkward moments during the episode they never feel embarrassing and rather surprisingly most of them ring true. Sweet is helped by the fact that the script has been edited by Tim Key and Jeremy Dyson who have obviously aided in the general flow of the comedy therefore no scene outstays its welcome and almost every moment is played for laughs but at the same time the central relationship is never forgotten. In their handful of scenes together I felt that Sweet and Theobold had natural chemistry and I found the final scene particularly touching. However the majority of the highlights in this first episode came courtesy of Vicki Pepperdine and Alex McQueen as Tom's well-meaning parents. McQueen's soliloquy about the right temperature in which to serve rhubarb yoghurt was especially hilarious as were Pepperdine's attempts to dispose of her on-screen husband's junk. Even though Together never blew me away, I found it to be a charming sitcom full of promise and one that I'm definitely going to stick with for the time being.

Tim Key, on fishcakes, Footlights and the Fringe

Tim Key was a standup going nowhere fast until one day he took out a notepad and poetry spilled out of him. Now he's one of the hottest comics around. As his show Work in Slutgress hits Edinburgh, he talks about fooling Footlights, dying on stage - and the power of late-night fishcakes.

Great comedians can make anything funny. Eric Morecambe bleeding a radiator or Les Dawson reading out AutoTrader would be hilarious by default, but could modern standups work that same magic when, say, eating an entire watermelon or emptying a bathtub? Dave's new panel show hinges precariously on that premise, with a quintet of comics - this week including Frank Skinner, Tim Key and Roisin Conaty - performing acts at the behest of titular taskmaster Greg Davies. In practice, a premise unlikely to tickle the titter glands of many.

Radio Times review

As a civilisation, we're starting to realise that asking questions about news or trivia from behind a desk isn't the best way to wring semi-improvised laughs out of moderately popular comedians. Far wiser to make them do something less restrictive, where the thing itself is funny before anyone starts. So we come to this fun new jolly, where titular Taskmaster Greg Davies - flanked by the show's creator Alex Horne - awards comics marks for eating as much watermelon as they can in a minute, emptying a bathtub without pulling the plug out, or painting a horse while riding a horse.

The comfortingly familiar guests are Frank Skinner, Josh Widdicombe, Roisin Conaty, Romesh Ranganathan and Tim Key. Skinner is a good weathervane, since he's been around far too long to bother laughing politely at unfunny jokes. Here, he laughs a lot.

Greg Davies, Alex Horne and Tim Key talk Taskmaster

'I can't believe I actually cared.' That was the verdict of Greg Davies after one of the challenges set in the new gameshow Taskmaster.

Latitude Festival comedy review: Tim Key

Tim Key is back peddling his shambolic recitals in Latitude's Poetry tent, ruing the organisers who 'don't know where to put him' and solemnly vowing in passing to make it to the comedy arena at some point.

Latitude review: Tim Key

In the absence of Daniel Kitson the coolest comedian at this year's festival is Tim Key.

Tim Key and Alex Horne: How we met

'We spent an afternoon seeing how much stuff we could fit down our trousers. I managed a toaster and quite a lot of cutlery'