Live At The Apollo

Live at the Apollo performers confirmed

Jack Whitehall, Micky Flanagan and Alan Carr have been confirmed for the new series of BBC One's Live at the Apollo.

TV bosses apologise for Patrick Kielty's Winehouse gags

Bosses at telly channel Comedy Central have apologised to viewers for screening a show this week featuring Irish comic Patrick Kielty making sick jokes about Amy Winehouse.

Try to see tonight's show as a sandwich. Stephen K Amos and Micky Flanagan are the slightly stale, economy-range bap around Jon Richardson's premier-choice ham with vintage cheddar. How the duff bread and quality filling ended up on the same plate is a mystery. Amos, as ever, is bland, while Flanagan's material on wooing women in the 1980s is predictable. Former BBC 6 Music DJ Richardson, however, is a neurotic genius whose stuff on his hang-ups and rigid world-view will make you weep. Best of all is his ice-skating first-date story.

Kevin Bridges, rising star of the comedy circuit, heads up Live at the Apollo tonight. The Glaswegian presents his dry, sardonic take on Scottish life, celebrity and the media with witty aplomb. Impressive, considering he's still in his early twenties. Joining him is Jack Whitehall and Shappi Khorsandi.

Funny Scot Kevin Bridges hosts this week's stand-up show. He's a capable compere with a honed routine on dads, specifically the point at which children realise theirs is a bit of a twit. (Bridges uses a different word, but we'll assume that you're reading this before the watershed.) Tonight's guests are Iranian-born comic Shappi Khorsandi, who uses her recent marriage breakdown to fuel a short, sharp routine on divorce, but the big laughs come from comedian number two, self-confessed posh boy Jack Whitehall. There's a whiff of Russell Brand about the south-west Londoner. He spits out a frantic, furious anecdote about going to school with Robert Pattinson (lead vampire in the Twilight films) and it's hilarious.

As a result of Mock the Week and The Apprentice: You're Fired, among others, Dara O'Briain is rarely off our screens these days, but it's easy to forget how good he is at stand-up. Here he delivers a beautifully observed piece about playing video games that'll have even Grand Theft Auto virgins snorting in recognition. He's introducing Greg Davies (We Are Klang and The Inbetweeners), who gets a lot of comedy mileage from his height (he's 6ft 8in); and Stewart Francis, a deadpan Canadian whose style is to spew out one-liners. On visiting a karaoke bar that didn't have any 70s songs he tells us, "First I was afraid... I was petrified".

Lee Mack is the host, which means he's going "to throw as many jokes at you as possible and hope some of them work". A few do. But prefacing a gag with the revelation that not many audiences have laughed at it just isn't conducive to side-splitting laughter. He's joined by Rich Hall, the grouchy, sardonic American comedian who looks uncannily like Moe from The Simpsons and who has a penchant for political observations: for instance, he left the country with Gordon Brown in charge and when he returned it was "being led by two gay antiques dealers". Last on stage is Danny Bhoy, who's half-Scottish and half-Indian: "So unlike most Scots I don't get sunburnt from watching fireworks." Scottish humour, along with a skit about the connection between club music and cats being sick, forms the basis of his act. So something for everyone.

Comedians always seem to open their shows by announcing they became a parent for the first, second or third time. Sean Lock was no different as he hosted the first in the new series of Live At The Apollo, declaring in the opening moments - much to the delight of the audience - that he'd 'just had another kid'.

He went on to expand on his family life, saying he often removes the child car seats and pretends he's single for a bit. It was a gag that appeared to raise a few more eyebrows than laughs in the wake of fellow comedian Jason Manford's recent indiscretions.

And the half-laughs continued to flow, as Lock didn't stray too far from the sorts of predictable topics comedians generally favour, touching upon bags for life, the Pope and disability. There was nothing new and really, nothing especially funny either.

The second half of the programme was given over to John Bishop, who began promisingly with a clever joke too blue to repeat, but he too descended into semi-funniness, with a self-deprecating run-through of his career so far.

And if his performance tonight was anything to go by, it's not hard to see why he has to be self-deprecating about his career. His routine was tame and badly paced, making his solid reputation seem unfounded.

So, it was an off-night all round at the Apollo. It's a shame for the series that it had to open with such a weak episode, but with the much darker Rich Hall taking to the stage next week, there's hope yet for a smarter, sharper show.

You know you're in good hands with the wry, lugubrious Sean Lock, who is on fine form hosting the first of a new series of stand-up showcases from London's Apollo. Sadly, he's not on long enough, and the second half of the show is given over to the ubiquitous John Bishop who will remain for me, forever, an acquired taste. But Lock is worth the price of admission, with a routine that's centred mainly on his family life, with occasional surrealist flourishes (his theory about why the Pope wears a small white cap on his head is an interesting one). There are gags about the state of his car, and his daughter's conviction that, at six years old, she has grown out of CBeebies.

Live at the Apollo: 10 classic one-liners

A new series of the stand-up show, Live at the Apollo, begins this evening at 9.30pm on BBC One. To get you in the mood, here are ten of the best one-liners from its comedians.