Mr & Mrs Hotty Hott Hot Show

Fronted by sketch troupe Pappy's, this E4 Comedy Lab pilot is an "inner beauty" contest in which the public take part in various odd challenges.

Having watched the pilot I would say that there will only ever be one Mr. or Mrs. Hotty Hott Hot as this, on the whole, is a poor show. For starters I doubt this kind of format is displaying the talents of Pappy's at their full strength. You can't help but think that they're doing a panel show because E4 wouldn't give them the budget to do a sketch show, as they already had two sketch pilots this year (Anna & Katy and Totally Tom).

Also, I foundthe constant singing in the show to be hugely annoying, and some of the rounds were a bit - well, let's say "dodgy". One of them involved finding a hunk in a trunk. The hunk in question was a dwarf. Now, is it me, or is the idea of finding a dwarf in a trunk for the purposes of entertainment slightly distasteful?

Out of the Comedy Lab pilots so far, this one has been the weakest.

Mr and Mrs Hotty Hott Show was a product of Channel 4's Comedy Lab and, frankly, it could have done with a bit longer in the petri dish.

Written and performed by the sketch group Pappy's, and filmed before a bewilderingly delighted studio audience, the show purported to be a beauty contest - with the emphasis on inner beauty - inviting members of the public to compete in increasingly silly challenges, including the rolling of a stuffed lion attached to a skateboard.

Actually that bit did make me laugh quite a lot, and the general silliness was undoubtedly infectious. But it was all rather too reminiscent of Shooting Stars for my liking, and the gratuitous involvement of a power-posing dwarf in swimming trunks just made me depressed.

Forget political correctness, this is a sure sign of comedy at its most unimaginative and desperate.