Warwick Davis

Half an hour in the company of John Bishop would be reason enough to tune in, but he's plundered his address book and persuaded his celebrity pals to dust off their favourite one-liners.

Robbie Williams, John Prescott, Ricky Hatton, Freddie Flintoff and Warwick Davis all do their best to make us giggle, along with fellow stand-ups Jason Manford, Jason Byrne, Andi Osho and Mick Miller.

Members of the public are also given the chance to exercise their funny bone, including an impish schoolboy with a joke about poo (naturally) and a side-splitting laugh. As you'd expect from that line-up, it's a mixed bag but squeaky clean, so there's no need to cover young ears.

Great British Bake Off Comic Relief special guests

Warwick Davis, Bob Mortimer, Jo Brand Stephen K Amos, Ed Byrne and Watson & Oliver will take part in the Great British Bake Off specials for Comic Relief.

Life's Too Short special to shoot in February

Warwick Davis has revealed new details about the forthcoming Life's Too Short special.

Warwick Davis: 'Audience matters more than critics'

Warwick Davis confirmed that he, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are currently writing a follow-up one-off special of Life's Too Short, rather than a second series.

Gervais's Life's Too Short faces an uncertain future

BBC2 mockumentary about a dwarf, starring Warwick Davis, ended run with 1.2 million viewers and divided television critics.

The sitcom that appears to prove The Office's Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are creatively bankrupt, Life's Too Short distilled everything they've done before (a mockumentary format poking fun at a disabled character, with meta-jokes and celebrity cameos) but did nothing new or interesting with those ingredients. For half the seven episodes, it didn't even feel like a Warwick Davis-starring sitcom, as so much was an excuse to shoehorn in Gervais, Merchant and a guest-star-of-the-week. Things improved slightly for the last three episodes, once the storyline with Warwick's divorce became a bigger focus, but my goodwill was exhausted by then. It just wasn't insightful or clever, as everything here had been done better in Extras, and poor Warwick was forced to play himself-doing-a-David-Brent impersonation. A sore disappointment from two writers who used to demand only the best, but are now happy to devise stupid shows for their friends (see also Karl Pilkington's An Idiot Abroad).

Yes, Life's Too Short was covering old ground. Yes, it's use of celebrity cameos was lazy. Yes, it was gratuitously controversial. Yes, the physical humiliations visited on Warwick Davis became tiresome. But it was frequently very funny, beautifully performed and Davis emerged as a charismatic and engaging comedy actor. If nothing else, Life's Too Short gave an authentic starring role to a dwarf actor for the first time since... well, Willow.

Life's Too Short's finale was too little, too late

Life's Too Short's final episode was its strongest as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant cracked out some good gags and Warwick Davis' life slowly unravelled. But is it all too little, too late?

Second series of Life's Too Short planned for 2013

Ricky Gervais reveals that a new series of the Warwick Davis-fronted comedy is in the works.

There's nothing new about this Gervais/Merchant sitcom - Warwick Davis is just a David Brent for little people - but it has still generated some excruciatingly funny moments and more intelligent, self-reflexive comedy. In this series finale, Warwick's desperation to be in with the celeb crowd proves his undoing once again, as he ends up spending more than he can afford at a charity bash just to impress Sting.