Johnny Vegas

Another Sky Arts project that will have them scuffing their Hush Puppies with envy over at BBC4: a series of Anton Chekhov's one-act comic plays, revived to celebrate his 150th birthday and featuring some of Britain's best comedy actors.

Tonight it's A Reluctant Tragic Hero, starring Johnny Vegas in overdrive as the put-upon Tolkachov, a man given so many errands to run by his wife and friends that he's come to borrow a gun from his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook).

Nothing gets in the way of Vegas's boiling monologues: with a one-room set, painted backdrop, bright lighting, straightforward translation and no music, it's like a 1970s production and all the better for it.

Video preview: Chekhov Comedy Shorts

In this clip, Johnny Vegas explains to Mackenzie Crook the pleasures of settling down for a good night's kip, and what it's like to have that peace shattered by one thing in particular...

Produced by Baby Cow and featuring the likes of Steve Coogan and Julia Davis in future episodes, these delicious sub-half-hour productions recall a lost age of relatively low-budget TV treatment of the classics. In the opener, Johnny Vegas is perfectly cast as the put-upon Tolkachov, who visits his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook) to deliver a spittle-flecked monologue full of pathos and purgatory about his put-upon working and domestic life, only to get more, or rather less, than he bargained for, in the apparently sympathetic Crook's eventual response.

Among the hosts who'll be revisiting their home towns in this new series are Johnny Vegas and Russell Kane, but for tonight's opener it's Ben Elton, performing his first live stand up in a decade. The so-called "Godfather Of Alternative" has become comedy's embarrassing Dad in recent years, what with We Will Rock You and all, but his routines on rebranding and body piercing in particular show that he's still driven by the same moral sense and sarcastic despair at modern life as ever. Jason Byrne and Canadian Tom Stade guest.

Audio: Johnny Vegas - my dad ate my rabbit

One of comedian Johnny Vegas's most well known jokes is about how his dad put his pet rabbit into the pot and then ate it. While most saw this as just a joke, Vegas now admits that the joke is based on a true story.

Video: Johnny Vegas presents the weather

Johnny Vegas, who is in Nottingham as part of the city's comedy festival (24 September - 4 October), apparently has harboured a secret ambition to be a weather presenter. In true Jim'll Fix It style BBC East Midlands Today's Sally Pepper guided him through the job.

It's a queer cove of a show, this. The action never staggers far from the hovel of hash 'n' weed seller Moz (Johnny Vegas), so there's no variation of location - and often, his stoner customers simply take turns to arrive, act funny for a bit and leave, so there's not much story to grab onto. Losing your concentration would be forgivable and, perhaps, appropriate. But the eclectic supporting cast are worth staying awake for. This episode offers a hilarious pop duo - berks in leotards and Phil Oakey hairdos - and Sean Lock, who straps on his breasts again as dour transsexual Natalie. Most excitingly, Moz's new neighbour is played by Janeane Garofalo, once a star of The Larry Sanders Show.

Johnny Vegas makes return to Gilded Balloon

Johnny Vegas is joining a host of celebrities for three special shows at Edinburgh's Gilded Balloon.

Ideal, the tale of shut-in drug dealer Moz (Johnny Vegas) began its sixth series last night with Moz apparently being decapitated by PC Phil. From there, things unfolded with their usual skill, with Vegas's beautiful, idiosyncratic brand of melancholic comedy infusing everything. It now comes with added Sean Lock - as Brian's ex- and now transgendered wife. Rich, dark and satisfying as best plum cake.

With a plot line that's bound to be nicked by CSI if they haven't already used it - a cunning twister involving a beheading that turns out to be a case of mistaken identity - Ideal (BBC3) returned for a stoned-out-of-its-brain sixth series. Who'd have thought there'd be so much mileage in Johnny Vegas as a deadbeat drug dealer?

It probably helps if you're under some kind of influence in order to stomach scenes where Vegas gets pleasured, but once you've drifted into Ideal's alternative world of bong, it offers a smorgasbord of surreal pleasures, not least answering the troubling conundrum of what Sean Lock would look like if he sported a pair of fake breasts. Well, it had troubled me.