Comically challenged

I don't get out much nowadays, but when I do, I'm constantly being asked which celebrity I would most like to see thrown from a plane. Consequently, I have memorised a list of potential nominees, commencing with Rick Stein, the not-so-brill tellychef with the cod Padstow accent and the propdog he uses to bolster up his Mr Nice Guy image (even though he shellfishly dumped his long-term solemate last summer, in exchange for something younger).

Then there's Gyles Brandreth, failed MP, failed PM and failed wearer of woolly jumpers, who currently divides his time between caterwauling on the West End stage and making speleological expeditions up the lower colon of the royal family. Nor should I forget OJ Simpson, because it's always struck me as unfair that he didn't get the electric chair, while Christopher Reeve did. As to the question, "Who would hit the ground first?", my reply would be: "Who cares?"

Better still, if the plane could have crashed on BBC TV Centre during Friday night's Comic Relief, virtually every name on my checklist (there are dozens more) would have had a "job done" sticker placed alongside it. Televised charriddy events have always been a magnet for shameless self-publicists, especially those who have slipped a few rungs down the ladder of fame, and that's certainly true of Angus Deayton, the disgraced presenter of Comic Relief University Challenge (BBC2).

Never mind the tear-jerking infomercials about abuse of the elderly that peppered the programme: this show existed primarily to benefit one middle-aged victim of tabloid abuse, abuse that was deservedly heaped upon him after revelations about the cocaine-fuelled comic relief session he'd enjoyed with a whore in a Manchester hotel room, while his partner and baby waited for him at home. Nothing comic about it for them, of course, but for the rest of us, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, when copies of the soaraway News of the World hit the stands and popped through my letterbox.

"Qualifications for hosting this show include self-satisfaction and a superiority complex," intoned Deayton unnecessarily as he filled the chair once occupied by Paul Gascoigne's smarter older brother Bamber. And with that, the teams of Townies and Gownies began answering a veritable triviata of questions about popular culture, with only the voice of Roger Tilling to connect us to the authentic programme.

An undignified scrum of Baddiels, Skinners, Beadles, and Vaughans vied with each other to solve riddles about the line-up of S Club and items in the Argos catalogue, interspersed with earnest assurances that all this vaingloriousness would somehow enable very poor people in Africa to obtain drinking water. But, just as I've never quite understood why we had to send rockets to the moon in order to develop the non-stick frying pan, so we could surely cut out the middle men, and discover a way to feed the starving over there without also having to feed the egos of hungry celebrities over here.

Although several of the questions and answers gave every appearance of having been rehearsed (Johnny Vaughan's instant identification of a bust of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was particularly unconvincing), there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, on what was intended to be a comedy quiz. But whereas the participants on (for example) Have I Got News For You work damn hard to ensure that their carefully scripted ad libs sound fresh and amusing, the feeble interchanges here were typical of the charriddy mentality, where simply turning up and reciting a few hastily prepared lines is deemed sufficient.

Only Stephen Fry and Clive Anderson rose above the fray, displaying genuine wit and erudition, and emerging with their dignity intact, but the others captured my interest only briefly, when a question about urban myths cropped up, and they reminded us that Captain Pugwash didn't really have crew members called Seaman Stains, Master Bates, or Roger the cabin boy. Why did that intrigue me so? Because it is well known that John Ryan (the humourless creator of the cartoon series) is driven crazy by the mere suggestion of such impropriety. But sadly, he cannot sue if it is made clear that those names are simply a myth, so rage away Ryan, because your impotent fury never fails to delight me.

Surely it is time the nation was given some relief from comics who think that one night of lazy sentimentality will somehow compensate for 364 nights of comedic mediocrity? When (later that night) Ricky Gervais ribbed Richard Curtis, the Christian who runs this whole shebang (or is it half a shebang?) about performers who use the event for personal publicity, that rare moment of honesty was as devastating as a shaft of sunlight bursting into a darkened roomful of the living dead, and it's surely no coincidence that the event overwhelmingly attracts second-raters, while most top-class comedians stay well away, refusing to compromise their integrity.

Watching David Baddiel (he of the often- mentioned but nevercompleted PhD) snootily stating that he had been educated at Cambridge, then barely saying a word thereafter, reminded me of those ex-red-brick graduates back in the Eighties, who used to complain about the condescending way that Oxbridge alumni would ridicule their less-ancient academic establishments. Yet the moment that John (two O levels and a budgerigar) Major opened up higher education in the early Nineties, those same people began to whine contemptuously about "these dreadful jumped-up polytechnics... I mean, they aren't proper universities at all, are they?"