Question Time: Russell Brand v Nigel Farage

It's the clash of the egos: Russell Brand v Nigel Farage on Question Time tonight. Who has impressed audiences the most in previous appearances on the show?

Russell Brand & Nigel Farage on Question Time next week

Next week's Question Time is to have a panel featuring both Ukip leader Nigel Farage and comedian Russell Brand.

Miriam Margolyes interview

She doesn't like Tony Abbott's swimwear or policies, thinks Nigel Farage is frightening, loves Australia - mostly - and thinks Israel can be blind to its own faults. Anything else to add to the list?

Stewart Lee: liberal comedy cabal will crush the Ukips

Nigel Farage and the comedian Andrew Lawrence have accused a 'politically correct comedy clique' of targeting Ukip and favouring talentless women and 'ethnics'. The gloves are off, says founding member Stewart Lee.

Frankie Boyle: UKIP is fair game for comedians

Nigel Farage's moan about 'leftie comedians' on panel shows is riddled with contradictions. He appears to want comics not to make jokes.

Nigel Farage: Comedy shows can't understand UKIP

Liberal shows like Mock The Week just can't understand why UKIP has so many supporters. The fact that 4.4m people voted for UKIP at the European Elections baffles the media's elites.

Ava Vidal: As a black female comedian, I do loathe Ukip

A British comedian has won the praise of Nigel Farage for slamming TV comics as politically correct liberals. Ava Vidal, (who also took exception to his views on female and ethnic comedians) explains why right-wing jokers are no longer popular.

Why do they do it? MPs who appear on BBC's Have I Got News For You, I mean.

Conservative Peter Bone was the latest to enter the lion's den and receive a mauling, with an old headline dragged up accusing him of being "Britain's meanest boss" for paying a trainee 87p an hour, and then just as predictably contrasted with another story that he employs his wife as one of the best-paid secretaries in the House of Commons.

It all made for toe-curling viewing as he floundered. But he's hardly alone - off the top of my head I can recall fellow Tory MP Michael Fabricant, former UKIP member Godfrey Bloom (the one who said women who didn't clean behind the fridge were "sluts") and Labour's then defence secretary Bob Ainsworth all making similar gruesome appearances. In every case, vanity triumphs over caution. Boris and Nigel Farage are the only two politicians who can remotely pull off such stunts.

One further point: the Beeb's decision to run its other comedy quiz Would I Lie To You? directly before HIGNFY is a particularly cruel piece of scheduling. The former show, thanks to team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell and host Rob Brydon, is as sharp as a tack and laugh out loud; messrs Hislop and Merton's effort, by contrast, now looks creaking and dated.

Why comedy and politics need a bulletproof persona

The biggest asset in politics, and comedy, is finding a personality, and sticking to it. Which is what Frankie Boyle and Nigel Farage have in common.

Mark Thomas: how to define Nigel Farage

The comedian and activist revisits the successes and dangers of his 100 Minor Acts of Dissent tour.