Johnny Vegas

Johnny Vegas to host shopping TV

Comic Johnny Vegas is going to become a real-life host of a shopping channel - as part of his new stage comedy.

An interview with Kevin Eldon

Big Train and Nighty Night star Kevin Eldon talks about his new play with Johnny Vegas, set around TV shopping channels.

Johnny Vegas's 'Ideal' returns with 630,000

Series seven of Johnny Vegas' sitcom Ideal debuted with almost 630,000 on Thursday evening, while Celebrity Juice remained popular on ITV2, according to the latest audience data.

A seventh series for Graham Duff's exemplary weed-com, starring Johnny Vegas as Moz, the hapless dealer and woman magnet. We join him desperately trying to win back the heart of Jenny, but dismayed to find she has taken up with the police force. And lord knows he's been through enough already, what with the kidnapped dad and the Triads and so on. Any sitcom that can leap deftly from straight drama to surrealism to full-blown musical and back again deserves far more acclaim than Ideal gets. Truly a show of which BBC3 can be proud.

Series seven of the baked sitcom, which returns every year to a space several yards to the left of leftfield. It has a voice and a style all its own: not laugh-out-loud funny so much as grotesquely amusing and just slightly disturbing, thanks to imaginative, off-kilter camerawork and music, and the fact that the characters all seem like the sort of people who'd be selfish and mercurial even if they weren't on drugs. Tonight, indolent hash dealer Moz (Johnny Vegas) orders pizza from the fascist place across the road, before trying to win his girlfriend back. He's soon distracted when a friend is stabbed and has to fight for his life, a development that would make virtually any other show quicken its pace. Not Ideal.

While some of BBC3's other long-running sitcoms have been somewhat, well, awful, Ideal soldiers on, managing to be sometimes brilliant, oft-times puerile and always interesting. In the first episode Johnny Vegas is joined by guest stars - weirdly, the usually reticent and annoying Paul Weller comes across as quite playful and the ever lovely Kara Tointon (still wearing Strictly make-up) is her ever lovely self.

As for the plot, Moz wins back his Jenny but she's joined the police force, which makes things difficult. It's not perfect but you can't be too hard on something with full-on musical moments, some good jokes and some underplayed poignant drama too.

Johnny Vegas's puerile comedy about hapless small-time dope-dealer Moz has managed to make it to a seventh series. It's not that the antics of Moz (Vegas) and his dope-head clients aren't funny (they frequently are), it's just nothing much ever happens. In tonight's series opener, which features guest appearances from Paul Weller and Kara Tointon, Moz plots to win back his true love Jenny - until he discovers she has joined the police force.

Heavyweight swinger Donald goes AWOL on the nudist beach, his wife Jacqueline causes a water-skiing accident, Gavin's partner Troy surfaces with dramatic news, and Madge launches her new bar, the Batley Arms Thus ends another ribald season at the Solana Resort. The show may have lost three key Geoffreys - Perkins (its original producer) and Hutchings (who played Mel) have both died, while mummy's boy Geoff (Johnny Vegas) was dropped last year - but the sun still shines on Benidorm. Around seven million viewers tune in every week for Derren Litten's award-winning, lovingly spun sitcom, which remains refreshingly unabashed at mining all things crass, crude and obvious. A superlative cast makes even the bum notes sing. And Steve Pemberton shows he doesn't need the togs and teeth of his Psychoville and League of Gentlemen grotesques to create a great character. Trunks, lobster tan and a patina of sweat and he's ready to go.

Johnny Vegas reportedly marries Maia Dunphy in Spain

Comedian Johnny Vegas has reportedly married his girlfriend of two years, Maia Dunphy, in a small ceremony in Spain.

Among the new arrivals this week are dear old Noreen, better known as Geoff's Mum before Johnny Vegas left the series. Tonight, she has in tow the obnoxious Pauline, whose accent has been mangled by residencies in South Africa and then Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Nick breaks the awkward silence with Madge concerning her current plight, and a not very plausible ginger-haired halfwit continues to pursue the ladies. It's not exactly Alan Bennett, but it proceeds amiably enough from one well-worn double entendre to the next - and Tim Healy's transvestite barman alone banishes the temptation to channel-hop.