Don't miss this very funny new series, showcasing comics from the alternative circuit in front of a primetime audience. Michael McIntyre introduces each performer with a high-octane performance that looked like a tough act to follow. Yet there isn't a single dud among the performers, and each one is as different as different can be. My personal favourite was the nerdy, off-key oddity of Mark Watson, who explains why he can't quite believe how lucky he is to be married and why he finds it difficult to walk across a bridge without throwing his keys into the water, although Rhod Gilbert's story of lost luggage deserves to become a classic.

Michael McIntyre, the chirpy stand-up, presents this new comedy series from various live venues around Britain. Each week he'll bring fresh new talent alongside a headline act. This first show comes from Edinburgh, with the Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert top of the bill.

When it flies, stand-up comedy is an exhilarating experience, and this - the first of a new series of Live at the Apollo - is a spectacularly good example of the genre. It is introduced by Michael McIntyre, who minces around the stage exploding with energy ('When I smile,' he asks, 'do I look like a fat Chinese man?' Yes, Michael, you know you do). He is followed by Rich Hall, who describes how an Englishman loses his temper ('I shall write a letter!') and how he met the Queen at Buckingham Palace. And it ends with an insane performance by a Welshman, Rhod Gilbert, who has a high-octane nervous breakdown trying to buy a duvet. If even a tiny part of you enjoys stand-up, you don't want to miss this.

Radio Head: 4 Stands Up

This season I must protest about 4 Stands Up, a show in which Radio 4 has selected, apparently at random, some stand-up comedians and just wheeled them out. You can tell things are bad when the announcer gives you, "4 Stands Up, compered by the Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert". That's all you've got, a postcode? He has nothing else going for him? He's never won, or done, anything? He has impinged upon our consciousness in no way? Can't you even call him a newcomer? I don't even know how bad the jokes were, because it was audience-participation heavy and they hadn't even mic-ed the audience! All I could hear was a kind of scuffle.

Variety - in the old-fashioned sense of different acts operating coming on and doing different things - makes a comeback on Radio 4's new four-part drive-time show.

No preview disc was available, so all we know going in is that the host is the Welsh comic Rhod Gilbert, a frequent voice on radio and face on TV.

The show itself consists of an opening act from a young up-and-comer (not Rhod Gilbert, somebody else), a performance by a double act, a sketch, or a musical number, and then on comes the headliner, a 'name' act who, unfortunately at this moment in time and for obvious reasons, cannot be named.