Comic Relief: How to be funny in one terrifying step

Jake Wallis Simons embraces the Red Nose Day spirit by trying stand-up comedy, with help from comedian Arthur Smith from Grumpy Old Men. As Comic Relief approaches, can he be as funny as Michael MacIntyre?

Funny Business, narrated by Radio 4 newsman Eddie Mair, showed us what comedians were doing when they weren't monopolising television - to wit selling their souls at lucrative corporate dinners. Here was the menu - half an hour of Michael McIntyre for £40,000, Ricky Gervais for £25,000. Lesser lights got less, but how could you resist? You were right there in the shop window prostituting your art. One lavish event, the Real Variety Show, with its audience of hardnosed business types, could land you 30 other corporate gigs. Jo Brand and Arthur Smith bared their shame but took the money. Everyone had experience of being ignored on stage. Rhod Gilbert was visibly distressed as he relived the night he found himself talking to the back of Sir Alex Ferguson's head at a footballers' beano in Mayfair.

It was revealing but long-winded, and I found myself wondering how much Eddie Mair was getting paid as we drifted into the overvisited realm of vintage advertising with its (yawn) clips of Fry and Laurie selling cigars and John Cleese being zany in the service of Schweppes. "Wherever you look now, money's spoiled it," said Cleese from his Monte Carlo apartment.

In Funny Business (BBC2), the first of a series, Eddie Mair narrated an investigation into the ways in which standup comedians can make big money, none of which is by telling jokes in comedy clubs.

Appearing in adverts is one way, but many comics find selling stuff on TV to be inconsistent with either their morals or their sense of humour. Not that many, actually. Less objectionable is the corporate gig. You're just doing your act, albeit in front of a room full of company managers for an obscene amount of money. Ricky Gervais gets £25,000 for a 20-minute corporate set. Michael McIntyre gets £40,000. It's not surprising that up-and-coming comedians on corporate booker Jeremy Lee's roster fall over themselves to appear in his annual Real Variety Show, essentially a huge audition for an audience of events company managers. Again, it's just a gig, you end your set with the punchline: "I'm available for bookings, and I also host!"

A lot of comedians won't touch corporate gigs either, but not necessarily for the reason you might think. "I doubt there's one comedian in the world," said Arthur Smith, "who hasn't died on his or her arse at a corporate gig."

Jo Brand finds them bracing - "If you do corporates, you get the message that not everyone loves you," she says - but Rhod Gilbert still gets heart palpitations just driving by the venues of old corporate failures. It may be filthy lucre, but it doesn't sound like easy money.

Portrait of the artist: Arthur Smith, comedian

My worst heckle? In Edinburgh, a bloke poured a pint of urine over me.'

Programmes that pull together a bunch of festival turns are often ragged and random - not this one. As your compere Arthur Smith explains at the top of the show, all the acts have at least a modicum of BBC4 sensibility about them. Alex Horne and his, um, Horne Section offer silly but dazzling musical comedy, while Tim Key does something similarly clever and stupid with his poems. David O'Doherty has a Bontempi organ and a unique way with words, while Nina Conti offers an ingenious and brilliantly improvised variation on her familiar ventriloquist routine.

Arthur Smith's Slippers Speak

Good day to you. A year ago we were sitting in a shop in Crewe as we had been doing for several weeks, when a man came in, bought us for £7.99 and took us down South to Balham in London. We are Arthur Smith's slippers.

For those not aware of this show, The Unbelievable Truth is a panel game, and as is law when it comes to panel games, it involves David Mitchell.

He acts as host of "the panel game built on truth and lies", in which four comics deliver a lecture on a subject which is mostly lies, except for five pieces of unlikely true information which have to be smuggled past the rest of the panel.

In this week's edition, Tony Hawks gave a 'lecture' on mice, Arthur Smith on Sir Walter Raleigh, Rhod Gilbert on soup, and Mitchell's 10 O'Clock Live co-star Charlie Brooker on his specialist subject of television.

The show is rather like QI, in that it is partly about unlikely trivia. Among the things mentioned were the fact that Bruce Forsyth first appeared on the TV before World War Two began and that Raleigh's widow kept his severed head in a velvet bag which she carried around with her (although this fact has already been on QI).

Mind you, a lot of the lies mentioned are things you really hope are true, such as Swindon having a "Day of the mouse" in which the mice get to rule the town, or Raleigh farting during the coronation of Charles I.

My only problem with The Unbelievable Truth is that I think some of the facts might be wrong. One of the things that regularly crop up is obscure but daft American laws, like how in Nebraska you have to brew soup if you are also selling beer. I always suspect that these 'laws' are just made up and just included because they sound funny.

Arthur Smith interview

Last time I spoke to Arthur Smith, he was hiking up a hill overlooking the river Dart in Devon, where he was filming for the BBC's The One Show. Today, however, he's a little more sedentary.

Rufus Hound joins Radio 4 Extra's comedy line-up

Rufus Hound is to host a show called What's So Funny? on new digital station BBC Radio 4 Extra, which will also include Comedy Club, a series featuring comics such as Arthur Smith.

Audio: What is the secret of comedy?

What is it about the language of comedy that makes us laugh?

The British Library has been hosting a series of lectures and events on the evolution of the English language.

Comedian Arthur Smith shares his thoughts.