Paul Whitehouse

The Times Article

Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield are to be celebrated for the quality of their characters, not for being revolutionary.

Messrs Enfield and Whitehouse are back with their sketch show. There's not much new here; the jokes are mostly about people saying things you wouldn't expect them to (builders discussing the merits of Brit Art, etc) and funny foreigners, speaking funny. And yet I laughed. Not all the time - this is a sketch show, so it is hit-and-miss by definition. But when I did laugh, I laughed quite a lot. Maybe the old ones are the best.

Enfield and Whitehouse return with another loose collection of sketches, although be thankful that it's not as loose as their profoundly dodgy last series.

All their familiar obsessions are present: football managers (there's a very funny opening skit where an irate boss gives a half-time team talk in several different languages), class divides, stiff black-and-white films, and middle-aged men trying to have sex with gullible young women.

It has the age-old problem of sketches that don't build on their initial premise - see the 1940s Bourne Identity (Oh hell's bells, who the devil am I?), a funny idea that drifts on for about a week - and lot of the material is, in truth, a bit too familiar. But if, for instance, the elderly DJs who play nothing but hip-hop are one variation too many on an old gag, it doesn't matter when it's as well performed as this is.

The gabbling, Plasticine-faced surgeons, and the rabid northern man who lets out a pained squeak when told by his southern owner that he must be neutered, are rewind-and-play-it-again fantastic.

So much comedy water has passed under the TV bridge since Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse first did sketch shows together that when they reunited last year it seemed a rather retrograde step. Whitehouse had done funnier, subtler shows in between and with Mitchell and Webb and Armstrong and Miller on the scene, the market for male double acts is decidedly cluttered.

But they are back for a second series with old favourites such as the judgmental Polish café assistants and Enfield's badly behaved Nelson Mandela, and new sketches, including a Dragons' Den spoof and two elderly Jewish DJs. It should be at least as popular as the first.

Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse are comedy legends but their last outing was hit and miss.

Bloody hell, it has been recommissioned! Amazing, really, considering how staggeringly painful Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's first series was.

Quality control has been cranked up a notch but I should warn you, Nelson Mandela is back.

Best reason to watch is a brilliant take on Dragons' Den. Harry is Deborah Meaden but the moment when Paul's Duncan Bannatyne leans forward to sneer at Harry's Peter Jones makes this worth investing in.

It may not have the inspired characters of their earlier collaborations, but Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's latest sketch show still has its inspired moments.

Comedy couple back on fast track

The world of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse is possibly the only place you'll find a pair of elderly Jewish gentlemen presenting a rap radio show for Radio 3.

Much easier to fathom is the gentle, quasi-topical BBC1-style comedy found in Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's new sketch series Harry & Paul (Fri, 9pm, BBC1). Never side-splitting, never totally terrible, these days the duo find their fun in haughty Polish cafe girls, meathead South Africans and dim interior designers.

Harry and Paul Interview

With their sketch show back on BBC1, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse tell The Telegraph why silliness is the secret of their success.