Take a look at our comedy, it's the only one we got.

If I ran a charity in a deprived neighbourhood and a guy appeared, claiming to be interested in what I was doing, but was being followed by a Channel 4 camera crew I'd be asking for the £20,000 cheque right there and then. 


If, one day, I was standing in work, and I was introduced to someone who was there on "work experience" which was coincidentally being shot for a Channel 4 documentary I'd ask the Managing Director what their game was.


I've come to think that TV comedy needs a solid boot in the gonads. The parallels between what we have at the moment, and what existed in music in 1976 are obvious. Out of touch comedians whose sole target is to appear on a panel shows, rings with musicians whose sole target was to appear on Top Of The Pops. Then? Successful bands doing huge, indulgent stadium tours, playing set-lists filled with songs about the pains of being a member of a successful band, and the trials and tribulations of fame and fortune. Now? Successful comedians doing huge, indulgent stadium tours, filled with jokes about the pains of being a successful comedian, and the trials and tribulations of fame and fortune. Then? 70s Radio One DJ's hosting "Seaside Special". Now? Modern comedians hosting something which is effectively "Seaside Special". As I watch TV comedy I'm filled with a nostalgic feeling akin to that of someone living in the economically ravaged industrial wasteland of 70s Britain, hearing Supertramp's sunburnt mid-Atlantic AOR and wondering "what relevance does this have to me, and to my experience of everyday life?" And the answer transposes across 40 years; "fuck all". Yet this cycle of detachment and irrelevance continues. Amply demonstrated by the BBC decamping for another one of their annual jollys to Edinburgh, where finding someone new or fresh isn't as important as  returning with more, barely indistinguishable Oxbridge gristle to fill the seats on their endless procession of smug, self-replicating, panel shows.