Rachel Aroesti

Mitchell & Webb: 'We mustn't destroy all of our comedy'

In their first post-Peep Show outing, David Mitchell and Robert Webb are back with Back, a ghost-story about two brothers in a country pub. They rant about cream tea, the perils of Twitter - and whether sitcoms are doomed.

Alex Horne interview

The comedian and Taskmaster creator on the things that make him laugh the most, from Tim Key to The Blues Brothers.

Witch trials, office karaoke, snuff films, party games, incestuous cannibalism: no subject matter is too terrible, or trivial, for Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's hair-raisingly inventive anthology series. With help from a rotating cast of acting aristocracy, The League of Gentlemen[/c duo have spent three series battering down the divisions between comedy, horror and drama. However, one episode towers above the rest: the Sheridan Smith-starring 12 Days of Christine is one of the most profoundly evocative half-hours of TV ever made.

Ivo Graham interview

The up-and-coming standup whiz spills the beans about the things that make him laugh the most, from Lucky Jim to A Fish Called Wanda.

Simon Brodkin interview

The prankster character comic behind Lee Nelson dishes the dirt on the things that make him laugh the most.

Ingrid Oliver interview

The actor and sketch show comic opens up about the things that make her laugh the most, from The Thick of It to German nipples.

Even at the peak of its popularity, Matt Lucas and David Walliams's Little Britain was a PC-baiting nightmare. Especially uncomfortable in its portrayals of disability, it featured characters such as Andy, who pretends to need a wheelchair due to laziness, and Anne, a truly outrageous creation that exists purely to mock those with severe learning difficulties. Yet it is West Country teen Vicky Pollard that makes Little Britain a textbook example of problematic TV. Pollard was a perfect storm of conservative anxieties: she was working class, she was overweight, she was a single mother (of 12 children), she was a criminal. At one point she swapped her child for a Westlife CD.

"People always say 'oh I know a Vicky Pollard' and I think that's when you have a kind of real cultural moment", said Walliams on The South Bank Show in 2005. The "cultural moment" she actually heralded was presumably not the one Walliams was thinking of. Soon, Pollard had become the poster girl for the demonisation of the working classes. She was a character on to which people could project their hatred of poor women, such as journalist James Delingpole, who said Pollard represented "gym-slip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who'll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye."

Yet Pollard and her real life peers weren't just a punchbag for the press. By the turn of the decade, hostility towards low-income people was so overwhelming that the Tories ran a poster saying "Let's cut benefits for those who refuse work" to help them win votes. Austerity then ended up disproportionately punishing single parents, 86% of whom are women. There's no yeah-but-no about it, Pollard helped fuel the mood that got the UK to that point. Little Britain remains a thoroughly questionable chapter in British comedy because of it.

Rhys James interview

The angst-mining millennial standup on the things that make him laugh the most, from Frank Skinner to tight vests.

Phil Nichol interview

The Edinburgh award-winning Canadian comic on the things that make him laugh the most, from suede clogs to Phil Kay.

Harriet Kemsley interview

The standup and podcaster on the things that make her laugh the most, from Sunil Patel to Curb Your Enthusiasm.