Shooting Stars and That Mitchell and Webb Look

I was expecting a good laugh from the first episode of the brand new series from the mayhem factories that are the minds of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, but I ended up in tears. Twice.

Because I had to watch it again, just to get my head round how scary but hilarious the Coldland ad was.

It was a beyond-bizarre spoof of those cringy ads for the well-known frozen food store named after the country that gave us dust clouds and dodgy banks.

You know, where B-list celebrities at a fake party, egged on by the deeply awful Kerry Katona, pretend that mini pizzas with all the charm of an old insole and deep fried reconstituted fish bits in lard parcels are the most delicious thing they’ve ever shoved down their gullets.

Vic and Bob’s version was a far more enjoyable affair, with show stalwart Ulri-ka-ka in a bonkers wig playing an ill-disguised Katona and cackling about the great selection of cheap food she’s bought for her 54th birthday bash, while the rest of the Shooting Stars team looked simply terrifying as guests.

Mortimer, a partygoer out on bail, looked far too at home in his comedy milk-bottle specs and teeth that looked like they’d come from a petrified Yorkshire terrier.

Worse were the foul finger-foods. Sticky Lasagne, Sticky Peas, Sticky Pistols and the sinister-sounding Spoon Meat with Dipping Jam (“Only eight pence a pot!” screamed Ulrikerry).

When asked by a bewigged Jack Dee about the delicious topping on her sticky discs, she shrilled “Hydrogenated Tomato-flavoured Dust, they only cost a penny each.”

Yum.

When she told Mortimer that the whole lot had come to less than £4, he replied, grinning like a murderer: “And it tastes better than real food.”

But what had me in floods was when she pushed a “skewered fish coil” at a seated guest who turned out to be Reeves with a hunch, blackened eyes and a small plastic horse attached to his top lip for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

He glared at the camera with a genuinely disturbing look and boomed “Coldland” before making weird trilling sounds.

And there was I thinking that they could never top the Geordie Sofas advert.

Who but R&M could come up with: True or false, if you hit a monkey hard enough it will learn to whistle?

The answer, they insisted, was true, adding that you could even make it sing – “look at Robbie Williams”.

True or false, the Dutch language was a joke that got out of hand?

“True. Same with Scouse and the internet.”

What makes the show work so well, apart from Vic and Bob, is that the guests buy into the whole thing, revelling in the humiliation and Mickey-taking.

Jack Dee will be back next week despite being described as having a face like a needless comment, a galvanised pan and a crate full of rotten memories.

It all just seems so fresh and new, even though many old favourites remain – The Dove From Above and the Club Singer (Fight For This Love, or was it Fart in This Cup?).

Even the absence of George “He’s a Baby” Dawes couldn’t diminish this shining star as he is replaced by Angelos, the slightly depressed, mildly aggressive burger salesman and guest from the last series.

He filled the Dawes gap easily, keeping the scores while arranging his strange little collection of shoddy goods for sale. If this brilliant first episode is anything to go by, Tuesdays will never be boring again, at least not while the deranged duo are in charge of keeping us entertained.

Like all the best double acts, they’ve been going for years, but unlike many of them, they are still spectacularly funny and still totally original.

Which brings me nicely to the new series of That Mitchell and Webb Look (Tuesday, BBC2, 9pm), which, while hit-and-miss at times, was mainly hit, thanks to some very funny sketches.

Misses included a weak sketch about a bloke trying to buy a “sex trophy” to give to himself for being good at “doing it”, and the one where the couple talked sweetly to a baby but screamed aggressively at each another could have done with a bit more subtlety.

But the exasperated director trying to get through to the rubbish actor was superb thanks to its simplicity.

And the scientists in the lab discovering a potential cure for Alzheimer’s but not being allowed to do anything with it because they were working in the famous Laboratoire Garnier was especially hilarious when Monsieur Garnier (Mitchell) turned up, dressed as a gentleman farmer with a dodgy northern accent.

But for someone whose granny cheerfully mispronounced just about every word in the English language, the best sketch was the boss who shot his staff for mispronouncing words like Espresso (“Expresso”) and for saying “haitch” instead of “aitch” (with him on that one) before turning the gun on himself because he called them a bunch of ignoramii instead of ignoramuses (which, as a worker pointed out, was actually the correct word).

It ended with the last man standing (Webb) saying: “Ah, well, at least he can’t go round shooting whoever he likes anymore,” and the boss suddenly sitting up, taking aim and saying: “It’s whomever.”

Talk about getting fired.