At least Chubby had a ****ing punchline

YONE stumbling across Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping accidentally could be forgiven for thinking they were watching a documen- tary on Tourette's.

- with GARRY BUSHELL

The Channel 4 series, hyped as the rebirth of sketch show comedy, is beyond dire. It has 10 writers and barely a single laugh. What it does have is swearing, an ineffable amount of it. Recurring sketch Sweary Aussie Drama is just people shouting obscenities at each other for no apparent reason.

It makes you wonder why the ageing hipsters who run this clapped-out channel didn't just buy in Derek & Clive Get The Horn or the first Chubby Brown video. At least Roy’s effing and jeffing includes punchlines.

There were a few decent ideas. Aggressive airport security staff barking ill-tempered, contradictory instructions at travellers had a ring of truth but went on too long. The useless shrink felt real, but lacked laughs.

Georgian Londoners, used to slinging the contents of their chamber pots out of the nearest window, reacting to the concept of flushing toilets was a clever idea bogged down with tiresome profanities.

A smarter sketch featured a porn star plumber whose films were watched for the plumbing. The gag was echoed in episode two with a period drama that people only watched for the steam. It also had a Stab The Pirate board-game with actual stabbings, a decent ABBA skit, and one great line: "They used to call me the poor man's Gok Wan and then that phrase ceased to mean anything."