The first in a new comedy series written by and starring Dave Lamb of Come Dine with Me fame as Dave Railings, an agoraphobic conspiracy theorist (that's two good reasons not to leave the house) who is convinced the USA is about to cull a chunk of the UK population because his brother Jim has run out of cooking oil and can't make doughnuts. The madness doesn't end there. Add in a couple of special constables - one high on caffeine and both desperate to be proper coppers - and a Geordie woman with links to Yemen, and Dave is convinced that a dirty nuclear bomb parked inside a birthday cake is going to lay waste to the local park. It's a big, bustling comic romp, just don't expect huge laughs along the way. Five for effort.

New comedy, written by and starring Dave Lamb. (You'll know his voice. He does the sarky commentary on Channel 4's inescapable Come Dine with Me). Here he's a man in the grip of conspiracy theories. He lives with younger brother Jim above a café. Dave wants Jim to make doughnuts but there isn't enough oil. Remember, Dave's the sort of chap who spies international plots in cooking oil shortages. This one, says Dave, will lead to a nuclear terror attack. Then Jim meets a nice young Yemeni woman and Dave's paranoia runs riot. And not just his.

How Dave Against the Machine came to be written

A new comedy for Radio 4, Dave Against the Machine starts this Thursday night at 11.00pm written by and starring Dave Lamb. We asked Dave where the idea for Dave Against the Machine came from. This is what he sent us.

Horrible Histories style kids gameshow with Dave Lamb

Acerbic Come Dine With Me voice Dave Lamb is to host a children's quiz show - a spin-off from hit series Horrible Histories.

Come Dine With Me has Dave Lamb. Big Brother has Marcus Bentley. Match Of The Day had John Motson and this brilliant new show has Colin King and Terry McIlroy - the world's very first sitcommentators.

Played by Simon Greenall and Ian Kirkby these two are the gimmick that turns what would have been a reasonably amusing but fairly predictable sitcom into a work of utter genius.

With meaningless statistics, on-screen pie-charts and action replays they provide a hilarious blow-by-blow commentary on sports reporter Pete (played by Rafe Spall), whose love life amounts to a series of own goals and sendings-off.

In tonight's pilot episode Pete's latest potential conquest is a girl named Chloe, who is under the impression that he cares passionately about the environment (he doesn't). And we meet all his friends - best mate Rob who's engaged to an excruciating blonde named Anna and housemate Kurt, a Zimbabwean played by Waterloo Road's Chris Geere, who's obsessed with spreading the word about safe sex.

Most promising of all is Pete's nemesis Jake (Daniel Ings) - a dashingly handsome bearded eco-warrior who has just come back from watching the North Pole melt.

And here's another statistic for you: did you know Simon Greenall is also the voice of Aleksandr Orlov in the Compare The Meerkat commercials? Make this one a regular Friday night fixture.

"Don't mind Eddie, he likes to call a spade a spade. It's when he calls me a spade that I mind!"

Such is the power of sitcom that those two lines from Love Thy Neighbour are still fresh in my memory after nearly 40 years. Possibly because it is such a dreadful joke, possibly because every joke in Love Thy Neighbour was a variation on it.

Back in the seventies and early eighties, the humble sitcom was the meat and potatoes of British broadcasting, providing millions with unsophisticated but satisfying fare. This was before the genre was elevated to an art form, subjected to quality control and critically scrutinised to death. Or called a genre, for that matter.

Beyond a Joke takes us back to those glory days and places classic, and not so classic, British sitcoms into their social and historical context.

Which makes Beyond a Joke sound as dry as dust, but it really isn't. For one thing, the programme takes full advantage of the archives, cherry picking all of the best moments to make its point. And in a welcome change from the usual clip show convention of recruiting unknown stand-up comedians and former children's TV presenters to blab inanities, it invites actual informed opinion from such illustrious contributors as Tony Benn, John Cleese and Dick Clement.

Episode one was all about class, a rich vein of humour that sitcoms of the period mined extensively. We saw Captain Mainwaring bristle with indignation as Sergeant Wilson joined the golf club, Basil Fawlty fawning over an aristocratic guest, Margot Ledbetter locking horns with the local council. Plus Stan from On The Buses trying to sneak a dolly bird upstairs past his disapproving extended family. Which accurately reflected the enduring post-war housing shortage, but made a less than convincing case for Reg Varney as a sex god.

All of which was linked by Dave Lamb's suitably jaunty narration.

Stephen Mangan, a wonderful television actor who can do radio very well too (it's a rarer gift than you'd think) plays Sam, a fantasy novelist who gets swirled off into the alternative universe of Lower Earth to do battle for ownership of a magic sword which controls (naturally, what's the use of a magic sword otherwise?) everyone down there. Alistair McGowan plays his fiendish opponent Lord Darkness. There's an Elf Lord too (Darren Boyd), a dwarf called Dean (Kevin Eldon) and a Warrior Princess (Sophie Winkleman). Dave Lamb plays Sam's dog, Amis.