A Comedy Roast

Davina McCall to appear on 'Comedy Roast'

Davina McCall has signed up to appear on Comedy Roast next month.

Davina McCall for 'Comedy Roast'?

Davina McCall is reportedly being lined up to star in the next series of A Comedy Roast...

Bruce Forsyth cooks the comedy wannabes

Final score. Bruce: 5 - Modern-day wannabes: 0.

The phrase "celebrity roast" sounds like either an inspired idea for a bonfire, a romantic date with a footballer and his friends or some nightmare series, no doubt soon to be commissioned, in which minor soap stars share their favourite recipes. In fact, it refers to the practice whereby a group of comedians takes turns putting down a well-known entertainer as well as each other.

That's what the roast became in America, where it was popularised by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Last week, we got the British version, A Comedy Roast (C4), in honour of, respectively, Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne and Chris Tarrant. For reasons of national morale, it doesn't do to dwell on the difference between those two sets of names.

However, the thinking appears to be that what the show lacks in personalities, it can make up for in vulgarities. Sometimes, that tactic worked under the caustic stewardship of Jimmy Carr, who looked as demonically thrilled as a class clown given permission to swear at his teachers. Carr was responsible for most of the moments of comedy that produced not a laugh, but a gasp, including a joke about Tiswas being the second biggest thing that Lenny Henry had ever been in.

More often, the coarseness was cover for an overreliance on the autocue. As much as he sometimes struggled with reading lines, Dean Martin was never known to resort to the c-word on US TV and nor, come to that, did anyone ever accuse Sinatra of mistaking breast milk for "man gravy". A dry roast this wasn't.

Yet the biggest failing was that no matter how crude the insults served by Jonathan Ross, Jack Dee and a variety of comedians, no one, including the guest of honour, had heard of, none could match the flame-grilled indignity of taking part in the show. A roast that was all sauce and nothing to savour.

There were some great lines on Bruce Forsyth: A Comedy Roast last week. For those who aren't familiar with this largely Yank tradition, it's when a decrepit entertainer is celebrated and mercilessly teased in equal measure by his peers.

"And we've got a list of celebrities here tonight that literally reads like a who's who of who was available," said Jimmy Carr, kicking off proceedings. "Many say a knighthood for Bruce is long overdue, after all, so many of his contemporaries have already been honoured," he added. "Lancelot, Galahad..."

But the best lines came from Sean Lock who had a pop at the 82-year-old, doddery-dubbed Strictly host who lives at a mansion in a secluded part of Surrey. "So secluded it seems that even The Grim Reaper can't find it," Lock joshed. "I mean, at your age it's fine to wander into your kitchen and wonder, 'What did I come in here for'? But it's not so great on live telly, Bruce," he added.

And if we're looking to invent new words and phrases, how about "Crap as A Comedy Roast"? You'd use it to describe something that was as awkward and contrived and joyless as Jimmy Carr and chums spending an hour taking the p*** out of someone semi-famous sat opposite them on stage.

"Roasting" is an American tradition: being brutally but lovingly rounded upon by your peers while taking it all with benign grace - think: This is Your Life, You Stupid T***. The US TV version of this features some of the most staggeringly lewd, vicious punchlines I've ever heard, the enormous capacity of Pamela Anderson's vagina, for example, being a recurring theme on hers.

So what was in store for Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne and Chris Tarrant? Uncomfortable oddness, really. Jonathan Ross visibly rattled Brucey with some opening salvos: "He wasn't a pretty baby," he tells the audience, "but he did grow up to be a f***ing ugly adult." What else? Oh yeah: "When the dinosaurs died out, he was taken in for questioning." Arf! The weird thing was that most of the roasters were just typical gun-for-hire, Channel 4-type comedian fodder. Paddy McGuinness did a nervous Who Wants to be a Millionaire? skit on Tarrant, who looked so prickly throughout that you suspect Alan Partridge would have taken a roasting better. Jack Dee slagged everyone off and looked sadder than usual to be doing it. There was one quite funny joke about it being hard to believe the real Sharon Osbourne is here tonight, "because the real Sharon Osbourne is in a black bin bag round the back of a plastic surgeon's in LA!. And she took it all quite well, mainly because she just hooted like as sozzled nan the entire time.

Maybe everyone else loved it. It just seemed weirdly open and honest. I thought the whole point of being British is that we repress our true feelings, so that when they do pop out they're disguised, perhaps in the form of a witty joke or a song or a droll suicide note. Alternatively, we could just stick to slagging people off behind their backs so that we don't have to pretend to hug them in front of Jimmy Carr afterwards. I don't think A Comedy Roast suits us. If someone can work out a passive-aggressive equivalent, however, we may be in business.

At first glance it'll stump anyone why Chris Tarrant agreed to tonight's comedy "roasting". Yet if you can stomach the childish smut there are some fabulous zingers, such as Jimmy Carr's joke about Tarrant's divorce: "Famous for his charity work, Chris recently gave £12.5million to a Norwegian single mother."

Sean Lock says that he was reluctant to appear on this show. "I knew I'd have to write jokes about Chris Tarrant," he says. "Can you imagine a more barren, uninspiring, emaciated topic than that? I'd rather perform an hour of new material about pylons to a submarine crew after the stripper had cancelled." But after he has set the tone at the start of the programme, there are some wonderful contributions during the evening. Jamie Theakston is unwittingly hilarious because of his inability to read an autocue and Terry Wogan (who says that Tarrant is "always drunk and nobody likes him") gives a masterclass in comic timing. Mind you, Tarrant gives as good as he gets. His performance at the end proves that you don't work in television for more than 30 years without developing impregnable self-assurance.

Sean Lock begins by claiming he didn't want to be on because there's "no more tedious and emaciated subject for comedy than Chris Tarrant. I'd rather perform a set about pylons to a submarine crew after their stri p per has cancelled." Terry Wogan steals the show with one line, however.

Based on an (apparently) successful US model, the UK version of A Comedy Roast sees a parade of utterly uninteresting "celebrities", faux-insulted by a panel of comedians in a kind of This Is Your Life for the Big Brother generation.

Anyway, last night was Sharon Osbourne's turn. Presumably, her casting had more to do with her availability than her suitability; there can be little other explanation. No one, bar no one, needs to hear another word about her, even if it is from the pleasingly snarled lips of Jack Dee.

It's a shame, really, since some of the gags weren't bad at all. Patrick Kielty gave a particularly enjoyable turn. Who knew he could be so vicious? Even Gok Wan, who surely ranks close to Sharon Osbourne in the overexposure stakes, was pretty good. No, the problem isn't the jokes. It's their subject.

Given the level of venom each episode's victims have to tolerate, it seems unlikely that the show would attract anyone but the desperate or the egotistical. Both of which, frankly, I could do without.