Live At The Apollo

Jimeoin (pronounced Jim-own) is an Irish-Australian comedian bigger Down Under than he is here. From the minute host Jason Manford hands over to him, he has the audience in the palm of his hand with splendid physical comedy involving impersonations of how different birds land. You think his impression of the way a swan flashes its wings about is good, but his wide-boy pigeon is even better. Then he tops both showing how chickens "walk like they're in a minefield." It's downhill from there but it's a cracking start.

More stand-up comedy in front of the big lit-up logo at the Hammersmith theatre. Hosting proceedings is Mancunian wit and former One Show host Jason Manford, who tells anecdotes about parenting and pokes fun at boy band McFly, who foolishly sit in the front row. Manford also introduces sets by gruff Canadian Tom Stade and gentle Northern Irish observationist Jimeoin, who does an amusing line in avian impressions.

Host Sarah Millican, the mistress of girly self-deprecation, can't stand celebrity fitness DVDs. No, her ideal would be "Fat Lass Has a Go", followed up by "Fat Lass Tries Again".

Millican has fallen into that comfortable female-comedian nest where she pokes fun at her own perceived shortcomings before anyone else can, making the audience complicit in her cheery humiliation. But you let her get away with it. Possibly that's something to do with that deceptively soothing Geordie lilt, a terrific giggle and her charm.

She's funny, too; there are routines about a louche friend with an adventurous life ("To me, exciting is when you start a new tea towel"), her becoming an unlikely lust object on Twitter, and a boyfriend who can't buy decent presents. Elsewhere, Steve Hughes does little more than get the audience cheering along to the naffness of The X Factor, while Russell Kane lets us in on the poisonous reality of being a single man again.

In a rare, filth-free, you-can-watch-it-with-your-granny episode (and so much better for it), laconic US comic Rich Hall immediately gets the Apollo audience on his side as he points out that British people are so much funnier than his countryfolk. Then a very game audience member called Peter comes on stage as Hall's "human shield" to sing a creditable version of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads".

Good-natured and funny Mark Watson regales us with the perils of shopping for a single carrot, and Andrew Maxwell ends the show with a clever routine about a "cockney mosque" with a "geezer minaret".

Mock The Week's Andy Parsons takes on hosting duties tonight.

Don't worry about the first two or three minutes, when you might think he's having a bit of an off-day - he's on fire for the rest of his set, covering everything from the war in Afghanistan to how to deal with cats who use your garden as a toilet (before people call the RSPCA on me, while I find his idea funny, I wouldn't actually use it myself!).

His first act is the brilliant Andrew Lawrence, the self-confessed scary-faced comic who has been popping up on various panel shows this year.

I first saw Andrew a few years ago at a comedy club when he was a relative newbie to the circuit, and he was so funny he stole the show from the other, more experienced comics.

So it's lovely seeing him get this prime time platform (and, in my view, steal the show again, which is really going some considering his stage mates). Completing the comedy line-up is king of the one-liners Milton Jones... he of the messy hair, vacant stare and psychedelic shirt.

Combined, the three comedians give you a reason to stay in. Although with BBC iPlayer and its clones, not to mention magic set-top boxes that record entire series at the touch of a button, who revolves their lives around watching TV these days?

Oh yeah... that's right, I do. Doh!

The acts may be hit and miss but stand-up comedy is still enough of a draw to keep the ratings up for the seventh series of this comedy showcase recorded at London's Hammersmith Apollo. Tonight's host Andy Parsons, the bald-domed star of Mock the Week, will be joined by Andrew Lawrence for a large helping of innocuous observational comedy, while panel show regular Milton Jones will offer up a portion of silly, but entertaining one-liners.

As Alan Carr takes the stage to introduce tonight's stand-up layer-cake, there's a problem. He's not looking at his best. Not only has he already got sweat patches under his arms (entirely forgiveable) but his flies are undone (less so). Could nobody in the production crew have noticed his costume malfunction before they sent the poor man out on stage in front of an excitable Hammersmith audience and half a dozen TV cameras?

To any other comedian such lèse majesté might be a problem, but not Carr, whose act involves belittling himself at every turn in any case: this is a man so shameless he can make comedy from the sweat under his own man boobs. As he cruises through material on vajazzling, wave machines and driving tests, the shambling self-mockery keeps coming, and keeps working.

The very likeable Andi Osho follows, with some good material on sex and relationships ("I don't want the sort of man who licks his finger before turning the page on a Kindle"). And Patrick Kielty takes very public revenge on Daybreak's Adrian Chiles.

Tonight's host of the comedy showcase is Alan Carr (that's the Carr who wears glasses and is camper than Butlin's). He is not just the host but, as it turns out, by far the star turn as he introduces performances from up-and-coming comedian Andi Osho and a disappointing Patrick Kielty.

Between them Have I Got News for You and Live at the Apollo are a perfect double act. You start your Friday viewing with a light dusting of satire, a few knowing jibes from Hislop and Merton about current events, then - wahey! - at 9:30 it's time for filthy stand-up. By which time those refreshing beverages you allowed yourself earlier on will have lowered your defences enough to make pretty much anything fair game. Which is just as well.

This time it's Sean Lock, Ed Byrne and Lee Nelson who take advantage of our benevolent haze with slick, likeable routines. The great thing about Lock is that you sense he doesn't care too much if a bit of his act doesn't work. When a sequence about Madonna's dancing goes a bit flat, he pulls it back, partly by the unlikely device of having his Madonna speak in an Australian accent. And his routine on kids' pirate parties is lovely. ("In a hundred years' time will they all be dressed as terrorists?" he wonders.) Byrne does a long, clever cat-related routine. But Nelson gets the biggest laughs of all.

Comedian Mickey Flanagan hosts a new series of the light-hearted stand-up show recorded at London's Hammersmith Apollo theatre. Tonight's guests are energetic rising star Seann Walsh, who muses on Tube-travel etiquette, and Irishman Jason Byrne, who performs a typically smutty routine about having sex with his wife.