Victoria Coren Mitchell

The newest thing in comedy sketch shows - and doesn't that very phrase feel antediluvian? - is Watson & Oliver, well known to Edinburgh Fringe audiences. They're an appealing duo. Ingrid Oliver has a thrillingly low voice - Fiona Bruce meets Victoria Coren - she's a dead ringer for Myleene Klass (who is duly ridiculed), and she can really act. Lorna Watson is blond, brittle and has to work harder for laughs. Their opening gambit was a direly old-fashioned bit of sub-Morecambe & Wise before-the-show backchat, but, once they settled down, their sketches were inventive and unusual. In a spoof of a TV Jane Austen serial, the mob-capped duo tittered like six-year-olds about pin cushions to a pair of bored Mr Darcys, then switched abruptly to double entendre. ("Our dance cards - we eagerly await the filling of our slots by two special gentlemen.") A Victoria Wood-style pastiche of 1950s ladies' kitchen conversation - all pinnies and hair-rollers - was surreally punctuated by Watson's response-appropriate eyebrows. A greasy-spoon café became a symphony of shouts and orders in which everyone called everyone else "darling" - "Cup o'tea, darlin'?" "Keep the change, my darlin'" - until someone silenced the room by saying "Love". In what is clearly meant to be the show's signature sketch, the girls do their impression of Prince William and Kate tucked up in bed, unable to find anything to talk about except their wedding day. But couldn't they have found a better punchline subject than Pippa Middleton's over-prodded rump?

The best sketch imagined two Playboy bunnies squeaking competitively about how pink their living quarters were, how appealing their fake boobs, how delightful their lives, until they were summoned to cuddle up to the saurian Hefner. Between retchings, they competed as to which had a better excuse not to fulfil this noisome duty. It was a gift of a subject to these two funny, appealing women, and they seized it with unladylike glee. I look forward to seeing a lot more of them.

This panel show is returning for its eighth series, the fourth to feature Victoria Coren as host. The series began with guests Mark Steel, Christopher Biggins and novelist Jessica Berens (whom I've never heard of).

For those not familiar with the show, in each programme the guests talk about a normally held assumption and argue against it. In this week's edition the statements they had to argue against were: "Pantomime is an outdated art-form,", "Drunken displays on our nation's streets are a sign of national shame," and "It would be nice to live in a house like Downton Abbey."

While Biggins is obviously passionate about pantomime, not surprisingly it was Steel who was the funniest on the programme, especially with his idea of doing a panto version of King Lear. Berens seemed to add little to the programme, though. Obvious solution - have more comedians and less novelists. Not much else to be said.

Victoria Coren interview

The Heresy host talks about slaying sacred cows and reveals news of two upcoming Only Connect specials.

It seems unlikely that the ultimate question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything is: "How many series of Have I Got News for You have there been?" But this week saw the start of the 42nd series.

Jo Brand hosted the first episode back, with Victoria Coren alongside Ian Hislop and Graham Linehan with Paul Merton. When I learnt about the line-up my immediate reaction was, "Thank God!" It's something of a rarity for HIGNFY to have a line-up consisting of people who are all essentially humorists. No politicians, no journalists, just people who are paid to be funny for a living. That is who we want. It's generally one of the advantages that Mock the Week has over HIGNFY, in that all the people on MTW are nearly always comics.

Everyone on this week's show had their moments, whether it's Coren on her hatred of cat lovers, Linehan's in-depth knowledge of Twitter, or Merton suggesting confusion between Michael Winner smoking a cigar and a picture of a seagull doing a poo. What a wonderfully awful image.

However, the best bit was that this episode was the first in a while which didn't make any lazy jokes about Eric Pickles being fat. It won't last...

As much a part of the British autumn as football and conkers, the 42nd series of the topical quiz show begins with Jo Brand asking the questions, and Ian Hislop and Paul Merton - along with guests Victoria Coren and Graham Linehan - answering them. After a year in which the tabloid newspaper industry has taken a battering, and politicians continue to wade in sleaze, they will not lack for material.

David Mitchell's double act with Victoria Coren

David Mitchell has abandoned life as a singleton for the journalist and television presenter Victoria Coren.

The satirical news-based panel game has been running since 1990 and is now in its 40th series. The first guest host to face the crossfire from Paul Merton and Ian Hislop is the Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch; later in the series, Jeremy Clarkson and Martin Clunes will take the chair. The first guests to join them tonight are writer and presenter Victoria Coren and comedian Jon Richardson. We can also expect to see James Blunt, Nick Robinson and Ross Noble later in the series.

Professing to "expose the wrong-headedness of received wisdom and kick back at knee-jerk reactions", Heresy has a rather sober brief for a comedy panel show, which is probably one of the reasons it keeps getting recommissioned by the serious folk at R4. It returns for a seventh series tonight, with host Victoria Coren welcoming comedian Rufus Hound, artist Grayson Perry and political journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer to the studio. They'll be disputing the received wisdom that women look better in men's clothes than vice versa; and that an artist who doesn't make his own work is a fraud.

Interesting to note how Radio 4 handles the debate show: in the blue corner you have the newest contender, David Aaronovitch (Devil's Advocate, Sat 10:15pm) with his serious slant, and in the red, we welcome back Heresy, which is just seriously funny. Victoria Coren takes on such topics as "an artist who doesn't make his own work is a fraud" and "women look better in men's clothes than men do in women's". The three challengers take such received wisdom, mangle it, and see what comes out in the wash. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing Turner Prize-winning ceramicist, is possibly the best person to argue against both. Also on the new series debut panel is fearless comedian Russell Hound and political journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer. It is not just comedy, it is a poke in the brain and most welcome on this radio at any time. Ding, ding. Round one!

Tuesday, Radio 4: Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker hosts comedy panel show So Wrong It's Right, with guests Victoria Coren, David Mitchell and Rufus Hound, signing off with his catchphrase, "go away!". Thursday, Channel 4: Brooker hosts comedy panel show You Have Been Watching, with guests Victoria Coren, David Mitchell and Andy Nyman, signing off with his catchphrase, etc. Shamefully, no explanation was given - although panel show fans are known to find change disturbing - for Hound's absence.