Whitehouse & Higson: Felix Dexter obituary

Obituary of the actor and stand-up comedian known for his roles in The Fast Show and Citizen Khan. Written by Fast Show stars Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse

Primetime BBC comedy has been stuck in a '70s groove in recent years, with such laboured, lazy throwbacks as The Wright Way and Mrs Brown's Boys. This fetishistic nostalgia for some half-remembered grannies 'n' kids' tea-time sitcom nirvana reaches a heady low with the return of Citizen Khan for another series of toddler-friendly mugging and end-of-the-pier smut.

Adil Ray's puffed-up paterfamilias and would-be community leader Mr Khan was one of the highlights of R4's spoof phone-in Down the Line and its maligned TV offshoot Bellamy's People, but here he's stifled by a routine family setting and truly appalling gags that don't so much pepper the script as smother it with lumpy custard. Missed opportunities to celebrate and/or spear cultural attitudes abound, with creaky fallback references to the hokey-cokey, Lulu, bingo, the novelty of men in the kitchen and internet-savvy pensioners flooding in to plug the gaps.

There's a neat turn from Felix Dexter and a welcome return to telly for Matthew Cottle (the ginge from Game On), but these are drops in an ocean of twaddle, the depths of which are reached as Mr Khan mimes a selection of farm animals to his - yes, you guessed it - much-despised mother-in-law.

It's not real but it's very funny. This spoof phone-in is hosted by (fictional) Gary Bellamy, devised and produced by Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse who also appear, amid a glittering talent line-up which includes Amelia Bullmore, Felix Dexter and Adil Ray in the gloriously comic array of pretend callers. It's hard to go back to the real world of phone-ins after this, so perfectly does it capture their manic levels of non-communication.

This is a comedy about a local radio station in Birmingham. It aims to promote fellow feeling and harmony between Pakistanis, Indians, Somalis, Polish builders and every other next-door neighbour. The show is written by Adil Ray and Anil Gupta, is produced by Bill Dare (whose comedy credits are a mile long) and stars such fine performers as Felix Dexter (from Down the Line as well as this week's daily Woman's Hour drama Ancient Mysteries). But, as the BBC still dithers over the fate of its own Asian radio network, it's an interesting time to broadcast it.

This brand new sketch show sees The Fast Show and Down The Line star Simon Day perform as some of his best known creations at The Mallard, a small provincial theatre with not that much room in it. If you want an idea on sort of place The Mallard is, it's best put by the woman in charge of the box office admitting to adding the phrase "Must see" to acts because the tickets are not shifting.

This week, Day starred as his Yorkshire poet persona Geoffrey Allerton, reading some of his poems and extracts from his memoir Marking Time. Day/Allerton's poetry is excellent, making humorous comments on inner city life and going to art-house movies.

His sombre childhood memories were even funnier, covering the bad relationship Allerton had with his father. He mentions that his father, "threw a jar of Marmite at me," and that he showed him a picture of a naked woman, or as Day/Allerton puts it, the, "lady with the lower beard."

The show is not just about Day and his character, but also of the regular staff and visitors of The Mallard. There is surly Rastafarian technician Goose (Felix Dexter) who gets annoyed about being given jobs outside of his remit, the Leeds-born boss Ron Bone (Simon Greenall) who mocks Allerton's supposedly posh background, and there are the two posh mothers (Arabella Weir and Catherine Shepherd) talking about the problems of employing a "frog" as a nanny.

This has all the marks of becoming a really good series. Future episodes will see Day performing as reformed convict Tony Beckton and his Fast Show classic Tommy Cockles.

New situation comedy. And it's one worth catching. Written by and starring Simon Day, its six episodes feature him as different people who turn up to perform at a small theatre (so small there's a real person taking telephone bookings). The first one Day gives us is Yorkshire poet Geoffrey Allerton, whose observations on his own life ("My dad had big hands, like paddles...") bear more than a passing resemblance to one or two voices often heard on the airwaves. Catherine Shepherd, Arabella Weir and Felix Dexter are among the shining support cast.

When this comedy series began it went out late. It still fooled gullible souls like me into thinking it really was a phone-in and not an exquisite parody of one. Host Gary Bellamy is played by Rhys Thomas, the voices of all those nutters, fanatics, drunks and po-faced poshies come from Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Amelia Bullmore, Simon Day, Lucy Montgomery and Felix Dexter. And very funny they are, probably because they are not a million miles away from the real people who call Radio 5 Live's real-life late-night hosts Tony Livesey and Stephen Nolan.

The more po-faced listener could take this new comedy series as a serious treatise on heeding the warnings of environmentalists. Its central concept is that any person is capable of accidentally causing the apocalypse by just one seemingly harmless act that snowballs to cataclysmic proportions. I would hate to call any RT readers po-faced and so heartily recommend that you just wallow in the hilarious moments as we are guided by narrator David Soul to follow ordinary bloke Ian - the ever-dependable Simon Day - as an incident with a lamb shank leads to the deaths of everyone on Earth. It's all wrapped up in a brilliant Shawshank Redemption parody featuring an off-the-wall Felix Dexter in the Morgan Freeman sage-old-timer role.

Felix Dexter: Multiple Personalities In Order

Next to hop onto Sport.co.uk's garish grill of giggles is law graduate turned comedian - and member of legendary BBC series The Fast Show, and more recently the superb Bellamy's People - Felix Dexter, who this month brings his Multiple Personalities in Order show to The Pleasance Above...