Adam Buxton, Ed Byrne, Stewart Lee for Union Chapel

Stewart Lee, Ed Byrne, Mark Thomas and Adam Buxton are heading to Islington's Union Chapel over the next few months as The Invisible Dot launches its spring season of comedy.

John Prescott shifts his buttocks around in an armchair. 'So the doctor asks me: "What do you mean you want a flu jab in your left arm AND your right arm?". "Well, why do you think they call me 'two jabs'?".' Such is the quality of gags in this joke-based half-hour presented by John Bishop.

This 'show that always makes you laugh' goes for the funny bone by combining snippets of stand-up from the likes of Jason Manford and Ed Byrne with pre-recorded Christmas cracker-worthy contributions from D-lebrities and members of the public. The stand-up is far and away the highlight in comparison to the cast of Chingford health instructors, Wiltshire factory workers and Heather from EastEnders reeling off funnies that range from the bizarre to the hackneyed.

Entertaining enough, but could probably have done without the to-camera spots from a curiously vacant Bishop.

Great British Bake Off Comic Relief special guests

Warwick Davis, Bob Mortimer, Jo Brand Stephen K Amos, Ed Byrne and Watson & Oliver will take part in the Great British Bake Off specials for Comic Relief.

Britain's Oldest Stand-Up is an irresistibly charming documentary chronicling 90 year-old Jack Woodward's return to the stage after an absence of nearly half a century. The venue he has his heart set on is the Hammersmith Apollo in London, where he has admired the young upstart Michael McIntyre perform on the BBC's Live at the Apollo show.

And guess what? He lands a five-minute gig there as the warm-up for Ed Byrne. Armed with some new material supplied by comedy writer Les Keen, Jack heads for his date with destiny.

Nervous? Not a bit of it. Jack is excited at the prospect of playing to a 3,000-strong London audience, who hold no terrors for a comic who has played working men's clubs in Gateshead where hecklers threw coal.

"I heard you clapping and got here as quick as I could," is Woodward's opening line, and the laughs just keep coming. Turns out he's a pretty good comic.

My advice to anyone thinking of booking him is - don't delay.

Britain's Oldest Stand Up (More4) was a slight, sweet film by Clair Titley, in the new First Cut series, about her uncle Jack Woodward. He is a 90-year-old Chelsea Pensioner who harbours a dream of resurrecting the comedy act he used to perform in the 50s and 60s and - one of his favourite pastimes being to watch the new bloods plying their trade on the television show Live at the Apollo every Friday night - playing the Hammersmith venue himself. "I've took a fancy to it!" he exclaimed, in a burry, rural West Country accent that must itself be disappearing as fast as any pasture land down there. "I can't explain it - it's just there!"

Thanks to comedy writer Les Keen, who wrote him some new material to get him up to the mark, comedian Ed Byrne, who agreed to let Jack be his warm-up man (and gently warmed up the audience himself for Jack before he came on stage) and some giant prompt cards, he did it. There wasn't much else to the story but the rare sight of a nonagenarian, thrice-married, triple-bypassed (last year) incurable optimist had a charm all of its own.

Chelsea Pensioner Jack Woodward followed his father into the armed forces and, later, showbusiness, becoming a BBC warm-up man in peacetime. But his last gig, in a working men's club in the north, was in 1968. And now, aged 90, he says: "My biggest problem with standup comedy is standing up." This touching little film follows Jack's progress as he prepares to open for Ed Byrne at the Hammersmith Apollo. Will he remember his lines? "I've still got what it takes to get a lady into the bedroom. A stair lift."

Ed Byrne interview

We talk to Ed Byrne, recipient of the Best Supporting Actor at the Monaco International Festival Of Non-Violent Film, about what he's up to, and his new stand-up DVD...

Video - Five minutes with: Ed Byrne

Comedian Ed Byrne talks to Matthew Stadlen about how he got started in stand-up, live performance, climbing mountains and why the inspiration for his routines is like making compost

Robert Downey Jr was last on the show in 2009, promoting Guy Ritchie's film Sherlock Holmes. He declared it "the strangest show I've ever been on" as Norton turned his back on the star and played around on his laptop for several minutes.

Downey Jr then had to use a flannel to wipe custard-pie foam off the face of fellow guest, comedian Ed Byrne, before listening to Will Young singing.

None of this seems to have put him off returning to talk about Ritchie's sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, although this time he's got his Watson (Jude Law) to keep him company, and plenty else to talk about in the form of his second child, who's due in February.

Between them Have I Got News for You and Live at the Apollo are a perfect double act. You start your Friday viewing with a light dusting of satire, a few knowing jibes from Hislop and Merton about current events, then - wahey! - at 9:30 it's time for filthy stand-up. By which time those refreshing beverages you allowed yourself earlier on will have lowered your defences enough to make pretty much anything fair game. Which is just as well.

This time it's Sean Lock, Ed Byrne and Lee Nelson who take advantage of our benevolent haze with slick, likeable routines. The great thing about Lock is that you sense he doesn't care too much if a bit of his act doesn't work. When a sequence about Madonna's dancing goes a bit flat, he pulls it back, partly by the unlikely device of having his Madonna speak in an Australian accent. And his routine on kids' pirate parties is lovely. ("In a hundred years' time will they all be dressed as terrorists?" he wonders.) Byrne does a long, clever cat-related routine. But Nelson gets the biggest laughs of all.