Russ Abbot now a recluse 'because his shows no longer air', says pal

Comedy legend Russ Abbot is reportedly 'hurt' that his shows like The Russ Abbot Show don't air on TV any more, says a pal - and now 'given up' on a career in showbiz.

Can British remakes of American shows work?

Hang Ups, the new Stephen Mangan comedy based on Lisa Kudrow's original, is a rare example of the UK successfully taking on a US hit.

Russ Abbot rants at BBC for axeing Boomers

Comedian reckons the "five million" viewers of his gentle sitcom have been let down by the cancellation which comes eight years after Last Of The Summer Wine kicked the bucket.

Review: Funny Valentines - Russ Abbot: Last Chance

In a selection of nine short films you would expect there to be one dud and I'd have put my money on Last Chance. While most of the BBC's Funny Valentines feature names from the cutting edge of comedy this features Russ Abbot and is written by Roy Last of the Summer Wine Clarke, two people more from the wrinkling edge of TV comedy. But actually this is not so bad after all.

Boomers, a comedy-by-numbers thing set in Norfolk and apparently phoned in by a pig's bladder on a stick, is about comfortably-off fiftysomething baby-boomers going through non-crises. It features Nigel Planer, Alison Steadman and Russ Abbot, and diminishes all of them.

Radio Times review

This sitcom from Richard Pinto (Citizen Khan) will be clasped to the bosom of anyone who loves New Tricks, as Boomers centres on a group of old-timers, friends from years back, who find themselves out of kilter with the modern world.

The humour is broad and painted with the widest brush strokes and there are echoes of Victor Meldrew's curmudgeonly head-butting against the idiocies of political correctness and life in general. The cast includes some solid comedy names, including Russ Abbot as the dourest member of the group and Nigel Planer as the wide boy with the newly acquired young Eastern European wife (feel free to let out a weary groan).

The women (Alison Steadman, Paula Wilcox, Stephanie Beacham) always win out in any given situation as their hopeless blokes go to the pub. In the opening episode, everyone gathers at a funeral.

If the 90 per cent empty auditorium in which I saw this film earlier this week is any guide, TV comic Harry Hill has not struck gold, but something much smellier, with his graduation to the big screen.

Maybe it's Marmite, for people either love or hate his brand of comedy. As with Marmite, if you don't have the taste for it, it's not easily acquired, and it won't be acquired here.

Like Russ Abbot and Freddie Starr, before him, Hill revels in the adjective 'madcap', and there is certainly a strong madcap element to this tale of the ever-genial Harry and his nan (an exceedingly game Julie Walters) taking their apparently terminally-ill hamster (in fact, a cuddly toy) to Blackpool.

On the way they run into Jim Broadbent, playing a three-armed female cleaner in a nuclear power station, and Sheridan Smith, who plays the princess in a nautical tribe of shell people. Meanwhile, they are pursued by two villains dispatched by Harry's evil identical twin Otto (Matt Lucas).

Hill has attracted some top-notch British talent. Whether they read the script first is open to question.

Otto is cross because he was given up for adoption to a group of Alsatians in Kettering, and from that you get a hint of the kind of humour that prevails.

It's surreal, for sure, but the kind of surrealism that makes you sink lower and lower in your seat, wondering whether to make a dash for the exit.

If you do sit it out, though, there's some enjoyment to be had in spotting the comedy references - to The Goodies, The Lavender Hill Mob, even Charlie Chaplin's City Lights.

But I'm afraid that serves mainly to remind us what good comedy is, and what this isn't.

Russ Abbot has Mercedes nicked at golf club

Telly's Russ Abbot used the valet service at a posh golf club to park his new £70,000 car - and it was pinched.