Robin Ince & Josie Long signed up for podcast

Robin Ince and Josie Long have been signed up by Comedy Central for a second series of Utter Shambles podcast.

Josie Long's guide to surviving the Edinburgh festival

Award-winning standup Josie Long gives you the lowdown on making the most of the fringe: where to swim, where to drink and where to buy fish and chips.

Fourth Estate woos Josie Long with caravan & tombstone

A caravan and a tombstone stand alongside a traditional literary advance in a book deal Fourth Estate has just signed with comedian Josie Long.

Our man in the know bows out after a second successful run of You Have Been Watching. As ever, due to the late production of the show, it's impossible to know what Charlie Brooker's going to be lampooning with his guests. We do know that among them are regulars Rufus Hound and Josie Long. Joining them is the first man of British satire, Armando Iannucci, whose brilliant lancing of Westminster in The Thick Of It saw him have an almost Dimbleby-sized presence on election night television.

Lee Mack vs Charlie Brooker on So Wrong It's Right

So Wrong It's Right is the radio show hosted by Charlie Brooker in which his guests must try to "out-wrong each other". In tonight's episode he is joined by Tom Basden, Josie Long and Lee Mack - and it's with Lee that things get a little... heated.

The 100 club - Josie Long's self-improvement odyssey

Artists who signed up for comedian Josie Long's self-improvement odyssey reveal fruits of their 100 days labour/

In round two, more jokers try to outwit each other: zany stand-up Josie Long, comic writer Robert Popper and - the most impudent by far - actor David Schneider. Success will be rewarded with a "Lucas" - the newest, most arbitrary award around, named after jovial host Matt Lucas. Tonight he's after nominations for the most incomprehensible British accent, least practical pet and best war. That's if his guests can get a gag in edgeways: Lucas can't help jumping in with rib-tickling anecdotes, while selecting winners even more random than his categories. Not that we're complaining; this knocks the socks off the average, smug awards do.

After the high of last week's hilarious opener, I thought this episode was very flat overall. None of Sean Lock's flights-of-fancy left the ground, Jason Manford seemed to struggle for material, and the choice of guests wasn't very good. I'm not a fan of young standup Jack Whitehall, and while I find Josie Long strangely beguiling (it's her grinning, just-rolled-out-of-bed cuteness), she wasn't very funny here.

Peter Jones from Dragons' Den was subdued to begin with, but he warmed up in the second part -- and in doing so gave comedy ammo to the others about his millionaire lifestyle anecdotes. Fay Ripley wasn't a total loss because she got involved, but this episode was definitely slack and its content has already melted from my memory. You know it's a weak episode when a clip from the US version of Wife Swap (an irritating fat kid being denied junk food by his "swapped" mom) proved to be the highlight.

Tonight's finale sees five solid actresses, including Josie Long from Skins, launch a sketch show in the same female-friendly vein as Smack the Pony. It's most successful when focusing on women's obsessions - two office girls torture another by forcing her to eat carbs, and female reporters grilling a kidnap victim are only interested in how much weight she lost. On balance, very promising.

The all-female ensemble sketch show is an easy and predictable target for sexist comedy-haters, but Girl Friday should provide the opposing camp with plenty of ammunition. There's a hint of Chris Morris's Jam in the way it twists the usual fodder for less sophisticated sketches, such as the crazy drunk girl in a pub, and gives them a surreal or clever denouement. Josie Long heads up the cast, and it all works so nicely that it deserves to get a full run.