Robin Ince interview

Robin Ince, 41, is best known for live shows such as The Darwin Birthday Spectacular that fuse comedy and science. He supported Ricky Gervais on two tours and appeared in an episode of The Office.

Robin Ince's top 10 truly bad books

From Sign of the Speculum to How to Marry the Man of your Choice, Robin Ince picks the best of the truly bad books he's salvaged from jumble sales and skips up and down the country.

Robin Ince's first gig

Here, ahead of his appearance at the marvellous My First Gig comedy club on Feb 10, Robin Ince regales the story of gig #1 back in 1990...

He might be a friend of Ricky Gervais and a radio panel game regular, but Robin Ince isn't your average stand-up. He also runs a comedy institution called The Book Club, which involves him reading aloud from random second-hand tomes, and is a vocal atheist who curates gigs themed around science, Darwin and rationalism. This is a TV version of his festive variety show 9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People, which combines gags from Dara O'Briain, Al Murray, Shappi Khorsandi and Chris Addison with music, plus more intellectual fare from scientists and writers - the movement's daddy, Richard Dawkins, among them. Stimulating stuff.

I was really looking forward to this series because I think we need more family-friendly laugh-tracked silly comedy on our screens. Sadly it's not quite there yet, with some inspired gags and genuinely funny jokes mixed with some rather iffy character development and scenes which cross the line from 'silly' to 'stupid'. If it reminds me of anything it's Hippies - another much-hyped series from some big names which was enjoyable and amusing, but also chaotic and sometimes self-indulgent.

Sadly too it looks like Lab Rats is following in the footsteps of Hippies by performing quite poorly in the ratings and enduring some stinking reviews. It's perhaps to be expected - watching Robin Ince in a silly wig running around shouting for an entire episode is something that's always going to be an acquired taste. But I'm sticking with it, and it'd be a shame if it didn't get a second series after this week's episode, if not the funniest half hour of television this year, was almost certainly the cleverest.

What a brilliant sitcom to get young children interested in the wacky world of science.

Sadly, the show - starring Selina Cadell - ended up being scheduled at 9.30pm, way past the bedtime of anyone who'd find anything to laugh about.

I didn't want to write this off after its debut last week. I hoped the stupid jokes, stupid science and even stupider scientists might have been a one-off, but this week it turns out it was just getting into its stride and was preparing to get even stupider.

Tonight we're subjected to a stream of verbal diarrhoea from guest star Robin Ince, who's been defrosted out of his cryogenic freezing unit. The joke is he's not even dead! But this show is. Time to pull the plug and walk away. Or else shunt it over to CBeebies.