Harry Hill's TV Burp (ITV2): NOBODY can say comedian Harry Hill isn't value for money.

This series is shown on ITV1, repeated on ITV1 and then screened on ITV2. Considering how inexpensive it must be to produce, this must be one of the biggest bargains on ITV.

Whether it gets any funnier by the third time depends on your sense of humour as Hill, still wearing his trademark jumbo-size shirt collars, trawls through the week's TV programmes in search of the ludicrous, stupid or just plain silly incidents that have tickled his fancy.

Taking literally what people say provides much fun, as in the mother-of-15 talking about taking her large family on holiday. "The baby has his own suitcase, then I get the boys in one and the girls in another," she said, conjuring up images of children being crammed into pieces of luggage.

Jokes were made at the expense of Emmerdale, particularly the goings-on in the vet's surgery. The family who asked to see their dead dog were taken out the back and the lid lifted on the freezer. Hardly a dignified end for a cherished pet.

Hill wondered why there was a man sitting in the waiting room clutching a goldfish bowl with an apparently healthy fish clearly swimming around inside.

"Who takes a goldfish to the vet?" asked Hill, not unreasonably. "They're either dead or alive. The rule of thumb is upright, fine; on its side at the top, dying; on its side at the bottom, dead. This goldfish is in tip-top condition."

Perhaps the owner had come to have it put down, he suggested. Hill did the job himself when the BBC's Big Read bookworm appeared. A box of slug repellent soon put paid to the irritating little pest.

The chap who made a programme entitled Holiday Around My Bedroom came in for ridicule. Deservedly so, as his excuse for leaving a red wine stain, sustained during a previous relationship, on the carpet was that it was "a nostalgic souvenir of a feeling long since faded". A poor excuse for not cleaning.

Saddam Hussein, it was revealed, had received help tidying up his bolthole before the Americans captured him. The blonde one from How Clean Is Your House? had arrived, armed with a bottle of white vinegar, to put a sparkle on his fan extractor.

The US has also kept it quiet that Saddam's first words on leaving his hiding place were, "Is Sam still in Pop Idol?".

Hill donned wig and make-up to play most of these characters but let Jane and Denise, winners of Channel 4's Operatunity talent contest, sing for their own supper. They sang We Are The Cheeky Girls in the manner of an operatic aria. The worrying thing was that it sounded very good indeed.

Published: 23/12/2003