Mock The Week

I was flicking around the iPlayer this week and I settled on Mock the Week. I don't know if it was this week's or last week's or a repeat from last year. The news it's supposed to mock is so nebulous and incidental, it doesn't register as current affairs. The presenter is that moon-faced Irishman who was christened by a dyslexic priest. Whenever I see him I can't help thinking: "You really ought to be doing something better with your life." The show is a masterclass in too competitive joke-telling and trying too hard. The joke is always the same joke and the guests are always the same people wearing different ugly prosthetic Hallowe'en masks with comedy beards and character hair. It is a show of the most abject oppression. Grown-ups desperate for attention shout pathetic inanities and slight obscenities, falling over one another to garble payoffs that are more like IOUs or begging letters. If you changed the set a little and made it, say, a National Health Service waiting room, it would be easier to believe this was a documentary about special-needs ADD patients. This is only one of a whole slew of late-night comic quizzes that lack any purpose or self-belief. This isn't satire or anger; it's not even irony. It's comedic lap-dancing with ugly men.

There is a moment at the start of all of these shows when the compere introduces the teams to the audience. As each name is spoken, the person to whom it belongs knows that they're in close-up and reacts with a little cameo of hilarity. They'll do a small gurn, make a gesture, as a reaction to their own names. It's such a pitiful moment of insecurity, such a naked insight into despair and neediness.

What humorous little mime do you pull when you hear your name called? Perhaps we should all work on one in front of the mirror, so when we're introduced to new people we can flash a surprised guffaw and point our fingers like invisible revolvers, or make a show of glamour and run our hands through imagined big hair. And then people who didn't know us before would know right away that we're really, really, very, very funny.

What more could you want from a panel show than the brilliant Frankie Boyle and Andy Parsons? Well, probably just one more thing - the sharp and sure David Mitchell, always a hoot on these sorts of things. His fellow guest is the likeably down-to-earth Sarah Millican.

See how Gordon Brown's mouth falls down after he speaks? See how Dawn French is fat? See how Scottish people are smack heads? What about some celebrities? Don't they get DRUNK? See children? Aren't they sexy? See cricket? Isn't it boring? See stand-ups? When they guest on Mock The Week, don't they get to choose a round that allows them to recite a big chunk of their stand-up routine?

Mock The Week grows ever more popular, being the sole mainstream comedy satire show not peopled by authority figures and old favourites whose laughs grow more grating by the week. It is The Frankie Boyle Show, of course. While the others flail around him fighting, often pointedly, for applause, he can deliver the audience into a paroxysm of frenzied self-congratulation merely by suggesting that John Prescott is fat/Gordon Brown has one eye/David Cameron is posh.

Of course, the comedians (Boyle in particular) are capable of wit. But that's not the main outcome of the show. It's not about laughs. It's a show about concision, speed and nastiness. Get a clear run on the mic before anyone else and suggest that MTW stands for Mediocre Television Spamfilter and you'd get a laugh just for having replaced an initial with a rude word.

The most telling point is the guest comedians. Whether total rubbish (Gina Yashere) average (Jon Richardson) or brilliant (Stewart Lee, who described his own appearance thus: 'I must have looked like a competition winner, who'd won a prize to sit silent on an unfunny topical quiz show') they never make any impact. They're always less important than Andy Parsons. Think about how that must feel.

Mock the Nation

Dara O'Briain, a buttery-faced man with a smugly malicious manner, presides over panellists without a political idea in their little heads.

Tory leader David Cameron loves satirical show Mock The Week, according to its host. Irish comic Dara O'Briain, 37, revealed: "David Cameron said, 'Oh I love that Mock The Week show' and I was like, 'Really?'"

Mock the Week is cold-blooded comedy combat

Seeing Mock the Week up close and personal reveals just how insanely competitive it is. But is this the future of the panel show?

The funniest thing that's ever resulted from this show is definitely Newsnight having to repeat Frankie Boyle's joke about the queen. The repetition is absolutely hilarious. She's shouting at him by the end, and he's her boss. Anyway, this week will see Frankie Boyle try to make the sickest joke about Jacko, Hugh Dennis doing a rubbish impression, Russel Howard letting himself down by gooning and Andy Parsons delivering lines in a really irritating "de-de-DEE, de-de-dur" fashion. Of the guests, Frank Skinner will be laconic and Gina 'Did I mention that my parents are Nigerian?' Yashere will be practically edited out. Really, it's not awful.

Other than the editor and owners of The Daily Telegraph, the only folk actively praying for the expenses ballyhoo to continue are Dara O'Briain, Russell Howard, Frankie Boyle, Hugh Dennis and that bloke who looks like Matt Lucas' character out of Krod Mandoon (Andy Parsons). Let's hope they make the most of it as guests Frank Skinner and Gina Yashere join the teams.

Frankie Boyle Interview

The Radio Times dares to quiz Frankie Boyle, the mocker-in-chief.

The topical comedy show returns for a new, 13-part series. No matter how funny it gets or how outrageous resident panellist Frankie Boyle tries to be, for comedy value it'll be hard to beat Newsnight's Emily Maitlis relaying one of Boyle's ruder lines - which modesty prevents from repeating here, but is available on YouTube - to BBC director general Mark Thomson.