Victor Lewis-Smith

Set of Six (Channel 4) is billed as entertainment, but is clearly a human tragedy. [...] One wonders that anyone at Channel 4 ever allowed it to get on air. [p=1596]Rivron/p] is a likeable and highly original comedian, but he desperately needs to find somebody with the production sense to harness his talent. As it is, Set of Six is Doctor in the House on Valium.

The dizzy heights were attained by Edna Everage in the first of her series of Dame Enda's Neighbourhood Watch (LWT), "the Dame show which is a Game show". Masterfully deconstructing elements of the most grotesque of LWT's outpourings - Surprise, Surprise, Through the Keyhole, Game for a Laugh, Blind Date - she has rebuilt a hilarious parody of a game show that works in its own right yet subverts the genre at the same time.

And what about the jokes of Victor Lewis-Smith on Radio 1 (Saturdays, repeated Fridays). He is undoubtedly a funny fellow, full of breakneck wisecracks and all sorts of voices. But some of his jokes appear to be made at the expense of ordinary people. Who, for instance, was the receptionist asked to find, of all people, Haile Selassie? And how funny is it that some of us don't recognise the old emperor's name?