Comedy Rocks with Jason Manford was a one-off end-of-the-pier ­special that simply wasn't cut out for telly. This is the 21st Century, where we ­expect short sharp punchy scenes and fast editing. As opposed to a guy from Liverpool doing 10 continuous minutes of stand-up.

OK for a night out. But on a night in... a ­definite no-no. Jason's amusing enough in a gentle sort of way. Jo Brand's a reliable old warhorse. And with throwaway lines like "My granddad was an Elvis ­impersonator - but there wasn't much call for that in 1938", squeaky Joe Pasquale had me laughing out loud.

Some Northern ­comic called John Bishop seemed to believe that blokes don't send text messages. Tell that to Ashley Cole.

All too old-fashioned. Despite contributions from up-to-date ­popsters Scouting For Girls and Pixie Lott, the entire production was like something from a bygone age.

Friday night not at the Palladium.

ITV launch their own take on Live At The Apollo with Mancunian comic Jason Manford. Comedy Rocks features stand-up from the likes of scouse man of the moment John Bishop plus Jo Brand and bright young comic, er, Joe Pasquale. The show will be filmed the day before transmission so expect plenty of topical gags. As if that wasn't funny enough, there's live music from Pixie Lott and Scouting For Girls.

Jason Manford hosts a new Friday-night variety show, which is recorded the day before transmission to keep it as topical as possible. "It's a mixture of music and comedy," he says. "But the music will all be live and the comedy will be varied. Among the performers will be John Bishop, Jo Brand and (to mix it up a bit) Joe Pasquale." Manford is the ideal choice as presenter. Most people don't like being screamed at at the end of the week and he is a relaxed and genial comedian - a bit like the pleasant bloke in the pub who makes his mates laugh with gentle stories about the oddities of his family. With luck his personality will set the tone, although the words "ITV" and "variety show" together have an ominous ring.

On the press release, host Jason Manford describes his new show, ominously, as a "variety event" - as in "I'm really looking forward to being part of this variety event on ITV." I'm fairly sure those words never passed his lips, but the PR-speak is revealing: it's intended to be "event" TV - that is, a big show with a live, shiny feel to it. And to ward off too many comparisons with Live at the Apollo (surely an inspiration), they're playing up the "variety" idea, because there will be music acts, too, namely Pixie Lott and Scouting for Girls. As well as Manford, Jo Brand, Joe Pasquale, ventriloquist Paul Zerdin and "Merseyside's motormouth" John Bishop will provide the laughs.

This variety show is the equivalent of a late-period Oasis album - some of the people involved may once have been vaguely entertaining (Jason Manford, John Bishop and Jo Brand) but it's far too broad strokes (Joe Pasquale, Pixie Lott), it'll have a title that means nothing, and you know that you probably wouldn't get on with anyone who really likes it.

Having interviewed him a couple of times, we know Manford has good taste in comedy. Unfortunately, he's never going to be able to display that taste and will probably have to settle for being a wittier Peter Kay-lite. Imagine having to introduce Scouting For Girls as a career: it's no job for a man.

Comediennes are not the most conventionally alluring creatures on television - Dawn French, Victoria Wood and Jo Brand, to name a few, have often exploited their comfortable shape to hilarious ends.

So it will come as no surprise that striking funny-girl Olivia Lee, whose one-woman sketch show - Dirty, Sexy, Funny - starts on Comedy Central next week, has struggled to marry her glamorous appearance with her comic buffoonery.

"It has been hard sometimes getting people to take me seriously as a comedienne because people look at me and think: 'She's not going to be funny', says Olivia, 29. But that's a good thing because I am changing the cliched perception and bringing a bit of glam to it. You don't have to look funny to be funny - and there are always prosthetics which I can use in some of the sketches, although that is more for disguise in the hidden-camera bits."

Mistimed for Halloween, but well-timed as the thirteenth episode, QI continued its "G" series with a look at "Gothic". This was probably one of my favourite episodes in quite some time, not least because I'm saturnine enough to appreciate ghoulish trivia about gargoyles (they're actually water-spouts, the purely decorative ones are called "grotesques"), zombies (it would take about a month for one zombie to infect the entire world), novelty coffins (a modern tradition in Ghana, apparently), etc. Plus, great comedy does tend to bubble up from the darker corners of the human experience. To that end, misanthrope Jack Dee and the cynicism of Jimmy Carr were employed well, and Sue Perkins proved (where Sandy Toksvig and Jo Brand have failed to this year) that, yes, women on panel shows can be funny! Spooky.

The "G"-series topic this week was "Germany", with guests Jo Brand, Rob Brydon and Sean Lock joining regulars Alan Davies and "QImaster" Stephen Fry. The juice of QI isn't as succulent as it once was, but you're always guaranteed some eyebrow-raising trivia and a few good moments of comedy banter. I'm frankly bemused Jo Brand still gets work (because she's like a comedy blackhole to me), and this episode wasn't helped by weaker than usual turns from Brydon and Lock.

Still, "Germany" was a topic that particularly interested me, as I used to live in Germany and once worked with a Germany lady living here in England, so cultural differences and Anglo-German relations is something I've discussed many times. It's certainly interesting subject matter for Brits, who have a strange relationship and perception of our European neighbours. In this edition of QI we learned that Germans don't care that England beat them in the 1966 World Cup, that they're unaware their countrymen have a reputation for rudely claiming sun loungers with beach towels while on holiday, and that they broadcast an old Freddie Frinton and May Warden comedy sketch called Dinner For One every New Year's Eve (simulteneously, on every channel).

BBC Trust rejects complaint over Brand's Thatcher gag

A complaint about a gag by comedian Jo Brand in which she claimed "Lady Thatcher" sounded like a hair removal device has been rejected by the BBC Trust. The body also decided not to uphold complaints about Brand's comments about incontinence which she made in the same edition of BBC1's QI earlier this year, which one viewer claimed were ageist and sexist.

Would I Lie to You? is a return of a series I would have bet hard cash would never be recommissioned. It's a quiz show whose only apparent point is to give part-time employment to comics whose stand-up is better sitting down, and Carol Vorderman. I thought I'd seen the end of this grisly equation of smugness, anger and pert pettiness, but I hadn't allowed for the half-life of quiz shows. The point of this one - and I use the word with a joyless laugh - is for the comics and Carol to tell us something that may or may not be a lie: "I once swallowed a comb" or "I have an irrational fear of balloons" or "My mother had no bottom". The hostage of all titles that contain question marks is that they incite answers. In this case, who cares? Who cares if you are lying? One had to go to A&E to have a Hoover attachment removed. I don't care, none of us cares. This show is neither remotely interesting nor edifying. It is science, and it is isn't entertainment. It's watching a dole queue of stupid under-achievers - except for Jo Brand, who is above criticism. She is the Florence Nightingale of sickly format and mortally wounded quiz shows.