Press clippings

The [o]BBC[o]'s celebrity dinner party gameshow returns for a second season, with this week's diners Jonathan Ross, Gabby Logan, Mark Wright, Anita Rani and Rachel Parris all surrendering their credit cards in the hope one of them will be footing the bill. A gentle hark back to the days of dining out.

Ammar Kalia, The Guardian, 14th April 2020

How WILTY? became a TV institution

As it turns 10, the BBC show is now as satisfying and reliable as Friday night fish and chips. From David Mitchell and Lee Mack's comic chemistry to Bob Mortimer's genius, here's why it should keep us in hysterics for decades more.

Phil Harrison, The Guardian, 16th June 2017

It's debatable as to whether the world is quite in the mood for a light-hearted take on the presidential inauguration of Donald J Trump. But sometimes, all you can do is laugh. Jack Dee - whose mordant wit should serve the context well - will be joined by Gabby Logan and Romesh Ranganathan to answer questions, attempt to assuage audience concerns and essentially join the rest of us in hoping for the best.

Phil Harrison, The Guardian, 19th January 2017

Review: Jack Dee's Inauguration HelpDesk

With only a few hours before Donald Trump becomes the most powerful man in the world, now is a good time to ask questions about the future president - and who is better qualified to deal with it than four comedians and a sports presenter?

Ian Wolf, On The Box, 19th January 2017

Gabby Logan on darts

The nation's favourite comedians and celebrities become darts players for a Comic Relief special this week. Host Gabby Logan reveals all...

Justine Holman, The Daily Express, 28th February 2015

Radio Times review

At last, Buzzcocks has a permanent host. For too long we've been adrift on a choppy sea of guest hosts where for every swell like Terry Wogan or Adam Buxton who could make the show their own, there have been troughs of forgettable faces.

One of the more memorable is voluble Welsh comic Rhod Gilbert, who finally takes on the mantle of hosting duties left by Mark Lamarr and Simon Amstell. He's not as acerbic or waspish as either of those two, so expect more surreal anarchy than vicious putdowns. Guests Professor Green, Roisin Conaty, Gabby Logan and the 1975's Matt Healy will do their best to keep up.

David Crawford, Radio Times, 29th September 2014

To appear on I Love My Country is to enter a conspiracy of daftness. There will be rehearsed jokes, there will be flammable wigs, and there will be mum-dancing (we're not looking at anyone in particular, though since you ask, Gabby Logan does have children). The guests (and the viewers) who let themselves go tend to have the best time of it, but specialist subjects help, too. On Frank's team, Edith Bowman reaps the rewards of the question-setter's twin obsessions with music and Scotland, while, faced with too much random general knowledge, team-mate Rebecca Adlington wails good-naturedly, "I'm 23! I don't know these things!" She's not going to be humiliated - the whole thing is, of course, relentlessly good-natured - but she might just find out how many people listed heavy metal as their religion in the last census. Every day's a school day.

Emma Sturgess, Radio Times, 14th September 2013

TV review: I Love My Country

What delivers the death blow to I Love My Country is its choice of host. Gabby Logan is a perfectly competent presenter, but she does not do fun or spontaneous, and subsequently spent the entire programme looking like a strict schoolteacher struggling to let her hair down on the last day of term.

Harry Venning, The Stage, 16th August 2013

Watching I Love My Country (BBC1) was like being trapped in a hyper-active toddlers tea-party where all the kids had eaten too much jelly and ice cream and were on some manic sugar rush.

The audience giggled itself silly at anything and everything, the rival teams jumped up and down and clapped themselves for getting stupidly easy questions right.

Yes folks, welcome to BBC1's idea of Saturday tea-time entertainment. The absurdly ubiquitous Gabby Logan as a jigging cheerleader ('Us Brits love a good shindig'), Frank Skinner in a spangly red bra, massacring the samba and the Mayor of Wycombe on the scales for a Guess The Weight competition. Your average village fĂȘte has more inspired ideas than this.

The over-arching theme here, and I'm being kind, is an attempt to tail-gate the feelgood mood of post-Olympic Britain with a quiz that celebrates the joys and eccentricities of national life.

Well, if the mood of Britain 2013 is a demented holiday camp, then I Love My Country got it spot on.

Keith Watson, Metro, 5th August 2013

Over each new Saturday night game show hangs the spectre of Don't Scare the Hare. Remember it? In 2011, the floppy-eared flop was pulled from BBC1 before the first series ended. It came at a time when the thinking was that shows needed crazy set gimmicks: a robotic hare, a moving wall with a hole in, an Olympic diving pool. Tonight's new arrival doesn't bother with that; it just cranks up the idea of a celebrity quiz to such heights of fizzing, demented hilarity that it's hard not to get swept along.

Frank Skinner and Micky Flanagan lead two teams answering British-themed questions from Gabby Logan. The Mayor of High Wycombe and the London School of Samba add local colour, and guest Charlotte Salt (from Casualty) gets a merciless ribbing on her surname. It's that kind of show.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 3rd August 2013

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