almost witty

So Get A Grip heralds Ben Elton’s return to stand-up comedy - with a funky female sidekick to act as a younger hipper person to his old-dad persona…

So it’s a bit of a shame that it hits off with a quick comedy skit about the effectiveness of spam. Gosh, that’s so 21st century. No, it hasn’t been done to death by every other comedian up to now… Plus, for a supposedly topical TV comedy show, to go on about the Diana conspiracy theory doesn’t exactly scream of bang up-to-date comedy.

And it just gets worse. Alexa Chung might be ok at reading off an autocue, but she certainly doesn’t seem human doing it - couldn’t they get a funky young female sidekick who actually looks capable of responding to Ben ad hoc instead of reading from a script? (Shame I have to diss her really - how often do you get half-Chinese people on prime-time ITV?) Hell, she looks like Tracy Barlow as she smiles there watching her ranting sidekick go on. Plus, someone should have told her that one of the first rules of comedy is not to smile and laugh at your own jokes.

Ben hasn’t exactly moved on either - all the comedy sketch interludes are almost exactly the same format from his BBC series The Man From Auntie (which was 17 years ago), right down to the upside down chins. He’s kept his ranty persona - but now it sounds like the old dad (that he is), rather than anyone actually funny.

Producers of Get A Grip, there is one thing you can do which would make it so damn better. Get them out from behind the desk - it might make the show just a little more dynamic instead of having two people just sat there reading off an autocue.

Of course, this followed the hilarious comedy City Lights which had our two main characters hounded out of your house after witnessing a gangland killing. ITV’s Wednesday comedy night has some way to go methinks.

PS: I would link to my superlative Ben Elton website at this point, but I’ve got no idea where it’s gone. Such is the way of old web sites.

Great moments from Smith’n'Jones:

- Planet Zoivrax. A planet I really want to visit, and a reference that will sail over the heads of non-Americans.
- The Judoons. Great blundering characters, I really hope they come back and don’t get forgotten a la Slitheen.
- Anne Reid. I bet she’s spent years practising her pantomime moments…

Lousy bits

- the first two minutes. I know they had to do a quick hurried introduction to Martha, but they could have just skipped straight to “I’m a doctor. Dearie me, we seem to be on the moon!”
- That last shot of the Doctor being all heroic with Martha. Surely these heroism moments ought to be rationed otherwise they’ll become blase to us?

You can tell by how much Doctor Who is dominating BBC’s output when you can’t turn for Doctor Who-related items everywhere, and two BBC TV channels end up squabbling over the remains to capture the Doctor Who audience.

Picture the scene - you’ve managed to take over the living room television for the first episode of new Who (this Saturday, 7pm, BBC One, fact fans). Hell, you might have seen it on the big screen that morning via preview screenings in Wales.

So at 7.45pm, you can:

• Go behind the scenes on Martha Jones with Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three
• Watch Doctor Who - A Celebration, a concert that was recorded at the Wales Millennium Centre in November 2006.
• Visit the Doctor Who website, where no doubt there’ll be all sorts of new offerings.

And that’s just the BBC. Never mind the rest of the Internet and multimedia empire.

Personally, I’ll hopefully battle server apathy and get through to Outpost Gallifrey, to watch thousands of really dedicated Whovians picking the episode to pieces. Great fun.

Ahhh, dear reader. I have a bit of a quandary - whether to run along the North Wales coast to see a big-screen screening of the premiere episode of new Doctor Who with David Tennant and Freema Agyeman seven hours before the rest of the UK - or to stay in bed and have a nice lie-in. I fear, I may choose the latter…

After all, around this time last year I was in Cardiff hob-nobbing with the press corps at the press preview of Doctor Who and writing Doctor Who preview-related gags for a newspaper. And now I’m not - and besides which, the press previews were in London yesterday.

Watching Doctor Who these days tends to bring up bitter-sweet memories and feelings these days. Whether it’s spotting old colleagues lurking in David Tennant’s fantastic video diaries, or just seeing a random Cardiff location masquerading as London or a foreign planet, it just keeps reminding me of my Cardiff and BBC days. Indeed, that’s partly the reason why I avoided Torchwood - in another universe, that could have been my web project, damn it!

But then I was never entirely happy there either, and a change in my life was well overdue. I think I’d have felt a lot better about it if I’d left by choice instead of having the decision thrust upon me. For the third time. Ah well…

So, as largely predicted, Comic Relief turned out to be more or less a dead duck, comedically speaking.

I still don’t see what’s particularly funny about Little Britain - although it was vaguely amusing when Dennis Waterman sauntered onto the stage - and the much-vaunted Vicar of Dibley LAST-EVER episode was just embarrassing. I must have been having a nightmare when Mitchell & Webb came on as two singing snooker commentators - and I’m still struggling to find the comedy between two comedy characters in a wheelchair singing I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles). It was trying so desperately hard to be this year’s Amarillo but it’s not got the novelty factor - or the “dance” which gets funnier with repetition. Plus the song is so over-familiar anyway.

The worst moments were any time Davina McCall was on screen. Alternating between squirmingly-orgasmic thanks to the corporate sponsors (”Let’s hear a huge cheer for Cisco Systems! Yeah!!!!”) and oh-so-sincere think-of-the-children-please-think-of-the-children appeals for more donations, one is reminded why she’s on Celebrity Big Brother and advertising keep-fit videos and not, say, doing a Fearne Cotton and appearing on pretty much anything that has a live broadcast. Hell, in one weekend Fearne did Comic Relief, Eurovision’s Making Your Mind Up and I’m sure I heard her doing the Radio 1 breakfast show this morning.

Still, at least the Catherine Tate sketches weren’t too bad and the Ricky Gervais indulgent skits broke the norm. But they didn’t raise a titter.

Fortunately, Channel 4 rode to the rescue on Sunday with yet another list show - but this time listing the top 100 comedy stand-ups. I’d quibble with quite a few choices:
- Peter Kay above Eddie Izzard ?!
- Harry Hill above Bill Hicks ?!
- Chris Rock above Jerry Seinfeld?
- Billy Connolly as the top stand-up comedian ?!

and it was strange how most of the stand-up comedians I’ve seen on the circuit were languishing in the 20s, while the likes of Peter Kay and Lee Evans - funny, but a little too slick and ungenuine for my liking - were at the very top - but it was a good three hours of entertainment. Now if only more stand-up comedians came to North Wales!