Press clippings

Not since Ali G has Channel 4 had a truly successful chat show helmed by a fictional character. After Angelos Epithemiou's patchy showing comes the turn of Kayvan Novak, who unleashes Facejackers wheeler-dealer Terry Tibbs on a not very unsuspecting studio audience. Novak's performance is superb, but the material is desperately one-note and the song-'n'-dance finale a damp squib. The guests don't help: Mickey Rourke is at his boorish worst as the audience lap up the Neanderthal banter about 'fat Welsh bitches', while a panic-stricken Anthea Turner joins in as best she can. As with so many of these shows, it's a bit of a mess containing too many ideas and not enough thought or structure. So it's probably odds on for a full series commission.

Gabriel Tate, Time Out, 16th August 2012

Channel 4's Funny Fortnight continues. Terry Tibbs, the cockney car salesman played by Kayvan Novak in character-led comedies Fonejacker and Facejacker, has already popped up on Come Dine with Me and Secret Millionaire. Now Tibbs gets his own chat show in which to harangue celebrities and stir up a studio audience. Tonight's rather contrasting guests include bad-boy actor Mickey Rourke and saccharine presenter Anthea Turner.

Toby Dantzic, The Telegraph, 15th August 2012

For all his lapses in taste, it's hard to see a logical successor to Jonathan Ross as the BBC's flagship chat lord. Pally but vaguely presidential (the staggering volume of money that he earns must help here), he meets successful people on pretty even terms - and it's this general absence of forelock-tugging that's probably the key to his success. Tonight's show marks his parting of the ways with the BBC and sees the host meeting some fittingly high-profile names: David Beckham, Jackie Chan, Mickey Rourke, with music from his glam faves, Roxy Music.

The Guardian, 16th July 2010

So this is it. The end. The final curtain. The last ever Friday Night with Jonathan Ross after nearly ten years on BBC1. Ross was always an acquired taste; his blokey, jokey style was too smut-centric for some, while others thought him edgy and funny. None of that matters now, of course. Ross was all too willing to assist in the implosion of his BBC career when he and Russell Brand Went Too Far and left mucky messages on a blameless Andrew Sachs's answering machine during Brand's Radio 2 show. The reaction was ridiculously overblown - the sky didn't fall in - but it was the kind of national convulsion that could end only, eventually, with Ross's departure. Tonight's final guests are David Beckham, Jackie Chan, Mickey Rourke and Roxy Music.

Alison Graham, Radio Times, 16th July 2010

David Beckham, Roxy Music, Mickey Rourke and Jackie Chan will be the last ever guests on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross which ends tonight. After the outcry over his £6million salary, and the prank phone call to Andrew Sachs that led to his suspension (and, ironically, jump-started Sachs' career) his position at the top of the BBC totem pole had become untenable. But it's not the end of Wossy.

He's already signed a deal with ITV for a brand new show which will appear towards the end of 2011, making him the third BBC presenter, after Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley to defect to ITV recently.

The move also means he'll have presented talk shows on three different networks, having made his presenting debut in the Last Resort With Jonathan Ross on Channel 4. It was that show which first shook up the staid and stuffy British chat show by injecting satirical comedy, irreverence and a fresh, American-style vibe. That style has now become so much the norm you couldn't imagine it being any other way.

Friday nights really won't be the same without him.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 16th July 2010

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