Interview: Lucy Porter

Shiney and attractive might be one way to describe petite comedian Lucy Porter's demeanour. However, it's also one way in which to describe the subject of her latest stand-up show.

Radio Head: David Mitchell

The Unbelievable Truth, for instance, should never have been recommissioned. It's only funny when Clive Anderson is speaking. They could more profitably devise a show that was just Clive Anderson, speaking.

Its failures as a quiz are admirably demonstrated by the fact that the scoring is now inverse to the drollery, so that Clive scores no points at all, and Lucy Porter sometimes wins. I don't care about scoring when it's like I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and it's meant to mean nothing, but they can't all be spoof game-shows. Some of them have to be actual games that work.

Patrick Kielty doesn't just join the regulars in the bargain basement comic debate show this week, he outshines both Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound. You might think that's easy but, after this, Lucy Porter probably doesn't. It's undemanding entertainment for audience and performers alike.

A new panel game, Act Your Age, ostensibly pitting comics from different generations against each other, sounded like a poor man's Mock the Week, with the six contestants, including Lucy Porter, Stephen K Amos and Barry Cryer, vying to come up with the funniest jokes or anecdotes. It wouldn't have mattered that chairman Simon Mayo's scoring was fashionably arbitrary if he'd made a wittier contribution, or helped the contestants out when they were floundering. Any panel game that is reduced to knock-knock jokes in its first outing is going to struggle to find an audience.

They act their age, but they're not funny

I can remember laughing only once, and even that was spitefully. Stephen K Amos, Lucy Porter, Barry Cryer and, bizarrely, Roy Walker had pitched up to pick up a cheque by not trying very hard.

The advent of 24-hour drinking may have largely deprived this sort of comedy of its natural constituency - the punter who consumes his bodyweight in Last Orders beer and then staggers off in search of radio-based hilarity - but that doesn't stop the Beeb from commissioning it.

Frankly, if you're sober none of it makes much sense, but it appears that the Scrooby of the title (played by the writer of the series, Andy Parsons) has gone missing but has left a series of recordings on his MP3 player, each describing his experience of various lifestyles, some of them alternative and some not.

The impressive list of guest stars includes Dara O'Briain, Frankie Boyle, Marcus Brigstocke and Lucy Porter, proof - if nothing else - that Parsons has some good friends on the stand-up circuit. There's also an interactive element that involves contacting a website and suggesting other enterprises for him to 'investigate'.