Stewart Lee: not easy getting jokes from migrant crisis

I wish Isis, Tony Blair and President Assad would think of the hidden costs of their actions. I'm trying to make a living here.

Rory Bremner aka 'Tony Blair' on Corbyn's election

Comedian Rory Bremner speaks to BBC Radio 5 Live's political correspondent John Pienaar under the guise of Tony Blair.

Bremner impersonates the former Labour Prime Minister, mimicking how he thinks he would have reacted to the news left-wing veteran Jeremy Corbyn has been elected Leader of the Labour party.

This clip is from Pienaar's Politics 13 September 2015.

Paul Throne interview

According to Paul Thorne, throughout history every generation thought they would witness the end of the world. They were wrong. We will! Paul explains to Martin Walker why he believes Tony Blair is the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.

The News Quiz (Radio 4, Friday), Britain's longest-running series in this genre, is also the lead offender in terms of bad topical comedy. Worn smooth by nearly 40 years of regular airtime, it is now as cosy and predictable as pie and mash; to my knowledge it hasn't caused a sharp intake of breath since 2011, when the host, Sandi Toksvig, made a pun about a four-letter-word.

Listening to the current - 86th - series, I've become convinced that if technicians programmed a computer with a wide-ranging set of News Quiz input-output rules ("Middle East peace talks = joke about Tony Blair"; "Education cuts = ironic reference to Eton," etc) and fed it the week's current affairs, they could accurately predict the show's scripts.

The only curveball in this week's edition was that regular panellist Jeremy Hardy had been asked to chair, as Toksvig was off sick. This seemingly humourless move had been singled out as a rich source of in-joke material by the writers. "I am the host this week because Sandi has been suspended for biting the producer's knees when her pre-show herring was not chilled to the correct temperature," Hardy began (Toksvig is 4ft 11in and from Denmark). He later returned to the theme during a limp segment about genealogy: "everyone on this panel will have a little bit of Scandinavian in them; could everybody just make sure they haven't sat on Sandi?" Unsmiling, I added "ST absence = joke about smallness + Scandinavia" to the list.

Radio prankster Steve Penk launches own podcast

Radio wind-up king Steve Penk has launched his own weekly podcast reliving some of his best prank calls from the past 20 years. Steve made his name at Manchester's Piccadilly Radio which became Key 103 and then at Capital FM in London with his cheeky prank calls in the 1990s, including winding up the then Prime Minster Tony Blair.

The Jim Davidson interview

In his most high profile interview for Broadway Baby to date, Martin Walker talks to controversial comedian, Jim Davidson. In a no holds barred extended interview they discuss Chalky White, Brian Dowling, Paul Sinha, the war in Iraq, Tony Blair, gay marriage, Davidson's favourite and least liked comedians and his forthcoming appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe. The interview is forthright and names are named. Contains repeated use of strong language.

Radio Times review

It's pure pleasure, this. Something so seemingly simple really shouldn't work as well at it does, but boy is it funny. Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan - or the versions they play of themselves - have reached San Fruttuoso in Liguria on their tour of Italy.

They take a beautiful yacht to a restaurant on a pebbled cove where, over lunch, they do impressions. Quite why two men doing silly voices filmed with the production values of an arthouse movie is so funny, Lord knows.

There's Steve doing Saddam Hussein's Frank Spencer impression or Rob doing Roger Moore playing Tony Blair. There's a lovely bit about what the different intonations that newsreaders use mean.

But underneath the comedy back-and-forth there's a poignant undertow about middle-aged friendship and the status games men play. It's cleverly done and not quite like anything else, ever.

Maybe the Beeb could have improved on David Frost - Hello, Good Evening And Farewell, but ITV got in first, something of which Frosty the journalist would surely approve.

Actually, I'm not sure I wanted much more from this programme. Frost raising his palms for a lightning punch combo by Muhammad Ali - check. Frost introducing his musical guests: "Ladies and gentlemen... the Beatles!" - check. Frost signing off, filling the screen, while the insurance swindler Emil Savundra gesticulated behind him, eager to put his crooked point across - check. The latter was Frost inventing trial by television. He also invented television satire. And, hang on, didn't he invent actual television?

"The first star conceived and created by TV," said Sir Michael Grade, who was good value as usual and, not wishing to hasten his demise, I hope TV will do him proud too. Concorde was invented for Frost, said Grade, so he could beat the time difference to present eight daily shows in a seven-day week, here and in the US. He was electric back then; you just plugged him in. The old clips must have surprised those watching whose earliest encounter with him was Through The Keyhole, when he seemed to be in urgent need of clockwork wind-up: "Let's. See. Whose. House. It. Is."

So many clips. To Noel Coward: "Do you wish you had ever been a critic?" Coward, appalled: "Good God, no. I also wish nobody else had ever been a critic." We got to see that when Frosty said "Hello" he always narrowed his eyes; when he said "Good evening" his body shuddered, as if it had been given too many volts; when he said "Welcome" he was as sincere as he could be, though on That Was The Week That Was he was quickly into some Establishment-baiting, such as this mimicking of a royal reporter: "The Queen, smiling radiantly, is swimming for her life."

Frost didn't invent chat television but never again will an interviewer get his own movie (Frost/Nixon - there's no point waiting for Norton/Biggins). Yes, he became Establishment himself. No, I didn't think politicians saying they liked how he asked questions (Breakfast With Frost) was any kind of praise. But the autumn of his great career did produce the tribute's funniest moment: Tony Blair's reaction on being asked, re President Bush: "Do you pray together?"

Tom Binns has a bit of previous on the radio. He was fired by a local radio station for dissing the Queen's Speech in 2009. Ten years earlier, Tony Blair's apparatchiks tried to have Binns sacked from Xfm for dissing New Labour (a badge of honour for any comedian).

His most recent work should garner awards rather than sackings. In Ian D Montfort Is: Unbelievable, his alter ego is a psychic from Sunderland, working with a live audience, and it's terrific stuff. He's nailed that fishing-for-detail schtick upon which mediums rely. At one point he senses a spirit on stage with him: "He wants to connect with a gentleman here tonight who's been watching some kind of sports, maybe in the summer of 2012 ..." (Long pause - he's an absolute master of the long pause.) "I've got, like, a big athletics meeting, or swimming, possibly."

Some proper Derren Brown-style stunts were hardly necessary - he's just very funny. He does politics, too, noting that in the US £3bn is spent on psychic services every year. "If this stuff's not real that's an awful lot of people being scammed," he mused. "I don't think the Americans are that stupid, do you? Or easily led." Pause. "Or if they were, the world would be in a right mess."

I felt a little uneasy as I sat down to watch Five Go to Rehab (Wednesday, G.O.L.D.), having such fond memories of the original, Five Go Mad in Dorset, which aired on Channel 4's launch night 30 years ago, The last Comic Strip offering - a "satire" on Tony Blair as a war criminal, broadcast in 2011 - did not bode well.

Such was the cultural impact of that debut Comic Strip - as well as its sequel Five Go Mad on Mescalin - that my generation grew up believing that the Enid Blyton stories had referred to "lashings of ginger beer" when in fact, as I learned from QI the other day, Blyton's phrase had been "lashings of hard-boiled eggs". Could the same team pull it off now they were in their mid-fifties? Well, I am happy to report, the answer was yes. And what was astonishing was how kind the years had been to them - even to Robbie Coltrane as the gypsy.

The conceit was that Dick, played by Ade Edmondson, hadn't moved on and was desperate to have a Famous Five reunion; had been planning it for 14 years, complete with picnics and a staged arrest involving actors dressed as policemen and baddies. But the others had grown up and now swore and said things such as "Stop being such a w-----, Dick". Tomboyish George (Dawn French) and Julian (Peter Richardson, who is actually 61) were recovering alcoholics - while shy Anne (Jennifer Saunders) was not only a strict vegetarian but also a lesbian.

While, inevitably, it lacked the shock value of the original parody, this turned out to be unexpectedly moving, such being the power of nostalgia. A good running joke was that Julian - "I hate binge drinking alone" - couldn't recall anything about their childhood adventures.

When The Comic Strip team had the idea of revisiting this comedy classic, their friends must have cautioned against it, possibly citing the train wreck that was the Carry On remake starring Julian Clary. I'm glad they ignored them. And respect to G.O.L.D. for getting it as an exclusive. But why wasn't it on Channel 4, with much fanfare?