Six famous faces celebrate Tommy Cooper

Why are we still laughing at Tommy Cooper 30 years after he died on stage? Barry Cryer, Paul Daniels, Johnny Vegas, Tim Vine, Brian Conley and Jason Manford explain.

5 things you might not know about the ISIHAC crew

Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Jeremy Hardy and Jack Dee are taking the beloved radio show on the road. Here's some facts about them.

Harry Hill & Omid Djalili for Slapstick festival

Barry Cryer, Omid Djalili, The Goodies, Harry Hill, Terry Jones, Phill Jupitus, Paul McGann, Lucy Porter and Tim Vine will be among the celebrities who will be visiting Bristol between 24 and 26 January.

Barry Cryer interview

The comedy titan backs the Big Issue's Caring at Christmas campaign and counts himself lucky to have a large family.

The spirits are high but the japes are deliciously low-down and dirty as Rob Brydon twinkles with seasonal cheer for this Christmas helping of tall tales. Did Stephen Mangan's Bedlington Terrier get its name by wagging its tail at the gravestone of a man called John Samuels? Lee Mack tries to dig up the truth, alongside Barry Cryer and Miles Jupp, while Mangan's partners in guile are David Mitchell and Miranda Hart.

Barry Cryer on writing for Morecambe & Wise

Eric Morecambe was very shrewd. The first year I worked on their Christmas show, he said, "I don't want any Christmas trees and reindeers and cotton wool beards and Father Christmas." I said, "Why is that Eric?" He said, "We won't get a repeat." And sure enough the Christmas show that year was repeated at Easter.

Eric and Ernie have never gone out of fashion, especially around Christmas. But as last year's Bring Me Morecambe and Wise on G.O.L.D. and a BBC tribute by Miranda Hart in March both proved, there's almost a yearning for the Sunshine boys' celebratory, good-natured humour in today's world of cynicism-driven comedy - even among today's funny men and women.

The first of two in-depth programmes charts the origins of the partnership, when John Eric Bartholomew and Ernest Wiseman first trod the boards, the moment they met and their early days in television that were almost as hairy as Ern's legs. Using archive interviews, family memories and superb black-and-white stills, this thoroughly researched programme explains the chemistry that would lead to 28 million watching the twinkly twosome.

Double-act profiles tend to focus, unkindly, on the funny man over the straight man. This one doesn't. As comedy guru Barry Cryer once said, "Eric and Ernie were a four-legged animal - they needed each other."

See the dance routines, hear the catchphrase "[cough] Arsenal!" in context and learn how far back their association went with unwanted harmonica player Arthur Tolcher. "Not not, Arthur... not now."

Barry Cryer on working with Morecambe and Wise

Barry Cryer talks about working with Britain's greatest double act.

Barry Cryer on back-to-basics sitcoms

"You don't necessarily need funny lines all the time. The key is to create characters."

When are we going to call time on the panel-game format? Trawling through classic British sitcom clips and listening to Jo Brand, Rebbeca Front, Barry Cryer and this week's guest Tim Brooke-Taylor shooting the breeze is a jolly concept in itself; do we really have to pretend it's a quiz? Cryer and Brooke-Taylor should have spotted the danger given they've been playing "the antidote to panel games" since 1972 on Radio 4.

Dad's Army's Ian Lavender and dinnerladies' Anne Reid provide a vintage tint of comic triumphs past, but if this generation's trapped in squidgy sofas playing for points, who's going to be free to make the future comedy classics?