Ben Elton

Comedy king in TV comeback

Ben Elton returns to TV stand-up for the first time in more than a decade. The comic tells Kate Whiting how the scene's changed since his heyday and why he's been hiding for so long.

Stand-up comedy: funnier with age?

This month Ben Elton returns to stand up in Dave's One Night Stand, having not performed for so long that a few of you young whippersnappers may not even be aware that he was a giant on stage.

Jongleurs plans to raise curtain on six comedy venues

Jongleurs, the chain of comedy clubs that gave a host of comedians including Graham Norton and Ben Elton their big break, is to open six venues after its founders regained control of the brand.

Channel 4's Alternative Election Night was good fun, if a little long. Still with only 3 results announced by midnight, it was better than all the endless, ill-informed, speculation going on over on BBC1 and ITV.

Gag of the night went to David Mitchell. "Does David Cameron actually find his wife attractive? Or, like everyone else, just feels he ought to?"

Predictably Jimmy Carr was rather less subtle, and came over all Ben Elton. "This is the most exciting election for 35 years. Margaret Thatcher can't remember a better election. Or the names of her children." Ouch!

The Thick Of It's Armando Iannucci revealed his abiding memory of the 1997 election. "I remember doing something not dissimilar to this - a live comedy show from this studio, went on for 3 hours," he recalled fondly. "My abiding memory of the entire election was sitting afterwards on a beer-sodden carpet next to Valerie Singleton watching Michael Portillo lose."

In Radio 2's Very Nearly an Armful - a quote from The Blood Donor, as any self-respecting baby boomer will know - the comedy writer Stephen Merchant analysed their lasting appeal, with the help of Denis Norden, Ben Elton, Beryl Vertue and David Mitchell.

It was to Norden and his writing partner Frank Muir that the two working-class lads, thrown together in a TB sanitorium in their late teens, sent their first efforts at comedy scriptwriting. Norden recognised their raw talent instantly and later put them "in a class of their own". They broke more new ground than any of their contemporaries, he said.

Apart from anything else, Galton and Simpson pioneered what Norden called "the jokeless radio comedy", by which he meant a series (Hancock) which relied on situation and character, rather than an endless stream of gags. It was the beginning of the sitcom.

Its apogee was Steptoe and Son, each half-hour episode a perfect little mini-drama of aspiration, conflict and disappointment, distinguished as much by the fine playing of Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett as it was by the masterly writing of Galton and Simpson.

Ben Elton on offending the Queen

He caused a scandal by calling the Queen a 'sad old lady', but Ben Elton also has things to say about the PM and Britain's bankers...

Shown on Christmas Day last year, this 60-minute documentary was made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the sitcom. Rowan Atkinson talks about the development of his character, Edmund Blackadder, plus there are interviews with the core cast (Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson) and writing team (Ben Elton and Richard Curtis).

Fortune vomits on my eiderdown yet again

News that Blackadder will return to our screens this Christmas with a new documentary has produced a level of national salivation absent from pop culture since George Lucas stamped on the dreams of Star Wars fans.

A more inane panel game you are unlikely to find - unless you catch the dire News Knight on ITV1, and I'd advise catching hepatitis instead - Mock the Week is a show you don't even laugh at contemptuously.

Rather, as Dara O'Briain, Hugh Dennis, Frankie Boyle, Andy Parsons and Russell Howard wade through it, as if through thigh-high excrement, it's a show to sit slack-jawed in front of, awestruck at its dearth of humour, charm and originality. Still, at least Ben Elton isn't in it.

Don't worry if you weren't impressed with the sleepy first run of Simon Nye's domestic comedy. This second series has a much more confident vibe to it. Kicking off with an episode that sees taxi driver Barry (Neil Morrissey) caught for speeding and his missus Carrie (Clare Rushbrook) trying to trace her family tree, there are more laughs in the first 10 minutes than Ben Elton's Blessed has so far managed in two episodes.

Despite the gentle, cosy set-up, this is everything a good sitcom should be - sufficiently grounded to be recognisable, but never afraid to spiral into gleeful bouts of clever one-liners and nifty slapstick when the occasion demands it. There's none of the desperation to force laughs that scuppers the likes of My Family, just a charming, laidback assurance that if the characters and dialogue are good enough, the chortles will come.

And come they do. Barry taunting a hungover Carrie with gives about female binge drinking, Kirk (Mark Williams) explaining about his Gran's holiday to Malmo (She hasn't seen that many blonde people since she flirted with the Hitler Youth in her twenties), Michelle (Michelle Gomez) experimenting with fake breasts and a genius sequence with a sarcastic traffic cop are just the highlights of a mainstream comedy wasted in the limbo of Saturday night.