Will Smith (I)

This is the penultimate Comedy Lab pilot, and stars Tom Davis as Iain Bodkin, a "comedian" (in the loosest sense of the word) whose main job is doing warm up for a TV programme... but he's actually a total failure.

This is something of a cringe comedy, as you continuously watch Bodkin trying to be funnier than he really is. His lack of success is made clear when he is forced to work in a supermarket, where his continued attempts to make people laugh always bring him down - as well as his supervisor's trousers.

Eventually Bodkin finds some work on a panel show, albeit dressed up as a penguin, kicked by a martial arts expert into an inflatable swimming pool of chocolate. This results in a pointless rivalry between him and the warm up guy for this panel show (played rather well by Will Smith).

This pilot's definitely got legs and would probably make for an entertaining series if given the chance. Yes, Bodkin isn't a love character. In fact he is something of a bastard, but he is a funny bastard...

I wasn't planning to review this show but things changed for reasons you will soon discover.

The long running satirical panel game, currently hosted by Sandi Toksvig, has been running since 1977, and last week saw the start of its 74th series. This week's guests included regular performers Jeremy Hardy and Susan Calman, semi-regular Will Smith, and journalist Matthew Parris.

There were some topics that you would expect to be covered, such as the royal wedding, super injunctions and Libya, but then it came to the subject of tuition fees, and how most universities are raising them to extortionate rates.

Among those are my old university, Teesside University in Middlesbrough, which this week announced it was planning to put up its fees of £8,500. As you would expect, they took the mickey out of the region. Parris said that what was actually going on was that they were actually selling the whole university for £8,500.

Smith said that £8,500 tuition fees were a status thing, but argued that if this was the reason that they should just change the name to "Oxbridge University of the North" or "Hogwarts".

It cost the university £20,000 to change its logo and the name of the establishment to "Teesside University" from "University of Teesside", so £8,500 is nothing, really. Toksvig at the end claimed that if anyone was offended, the £8,500 includes, "a whole row of terrace houses."

To be honest with you, I was shocked when I heard them talking about Teesside in such a fashion, because I am amazed that anyone on BBC Radio 4 has even heard of Teesside.

I didn't mind The News Quiz mocking my old university, though. I'm just glad it got the publicity, even if it was not the most glowing publicity. To be honest, when I heard that the fees were going up, I was on Twitter arguing the raise was impossible; because no-one in Teesside has £8,500. (It's true - I'm currently writing this on a Windows 98 in a skip near a Starbucks, leeching onto the Wi-Fi).

The News Quiz show is still entertaining after so many years, and because it is on at 6.30pm, it mocks the news two-and-a-half hours before Have I Got News for You does. Well worth a listen.

We must be nearing the point of critical mass at which there are more comedy panel shows than there are comedians. Argumental attempts, with intermittent success, to split the difference between Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week, by getting teams of the usual suspects to debate topics suggested by John Sergeant. Tonight, captains Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound are joined, respectively, by comics Will Smith and Jimmy Carr. Subjects include sweatshops, face transplants, reality TV and homosexuality.

Happy Tuesdays: Mr and Mrs Smith

I listened to Will Smith's Mr and Mrs Smith the other day - part of the Happy Tuesdays season of pilots on Radio 4. It was a show about a married couple undergoing counselling, and starred Will Smith and Sarah Hadland. I rather liked it. In fact, I like it a lot.

More meditations on love came from Mr and Mrs Smith in Radio 4's late night Happy Tuesdays slot, a series whose reviews thus far must have prompted some horribly unhappy Wednesdays. Written by Will Smith, who starred as the Conservative aide in The Thick of It, the scene was a marriage-guidance session. She was unsatisfied - he gave her a draining rack for their first anniversary - he was unsatisfactory: "I only feel like a man when I'm playing Call of Duty". Their romantic mini-break was predictably disastrous. It was, I suppose, the kind of humour you can multi-task to. Gently amusing, and Smith will undoubtedly go on to write slicker and faster material.

Things I learned recording my radio pilot

If you are married, and you write a show where you play a character going to marriage counselling who has your name, you can expect a few awkward conversations with people on the outer ring of your social circle.

Will Smith's Mid-Life Crisis Management (Radio 4) began with a reasonably ticklish stand-up routine. Smith was explaining how he'd decided to evaluate his life at 35, comparing himself with what others had achieved by that age. Mozart, he noted, "died at 37, leaving a body of work unrivalled in western music". Christ had died and risen again by Smith's age. And then came the bathos. "Chris Tarrant," he added, "had already given us Tiswas."

From there, sadly, it was all downhill; a bit like middle-age itself, you might think. Once we dipped into sketches and characters, this was decidedly creaky and patchy stuff. It felt formulaic too, with Smith the inept bumbler for whom every social situation was a failure. It also featured the lamest Louis Walsh jokes on record, and two posh old fools confusing cars and their wives, with allegedly hilarious consequences. If you're approaching middle age, and worried, don't be: it's not as bad as this.

He's a man unaware of how out of kilter he is with the planet, but Will Smith has turned 35 and is concerned by his lack of achievement. Coming across like a more obsessive Adrian Mole, he's without savvy, disgruntled with his lot - and fearful at the thought of doing anything about it. Yet what can you expect from a person who never received birthday presents when he was growing up because his parents thought August was too close to Christmas?

Will Smith's considerable comic skill comes in releasing our inner geek and it's our job to decide how far we should go along with his diagnosis of what's gone wrong with the world. But come on - which one of us wouldn't be enraged by someone who couldn't put the Police Academy movies in order? Oh, so that'll be just me and Will then...

Comedian Will Smith (not to be confused with the American rapper and film star) has co-written this new sitcom in which he stars as himself. Reaching the age of 35 has depressed him at how little he has achieved. After all, he says, Christ had died and risen again by the age of 33, an observation which gives you a notion of the size of Will's fragile ego. So he draws in to this scenario his fictional godfather Peter (played by superb Roger Allam) who each week will invite a special guest to advise him on some perplexing aspect of his life.

Will Smith is one of those people who's always seemed middle-aged, despite being young. But now, he's turned 35 and begun to stress... Such is the setup for Smith's new sitcom, also starring Roger Allam as Will's godfather, Peter.