There's not much good on telly, but occassionally a rare gem of a program pops up. Lat night I discovered, rather late in the day, Rob Brydon's clever spoof panel show Annually retentive. With its element of self-parody (which Brydon does so well), it's very much in the vein of Cock and Bull Story, mentioned below. Self-parody is difficult to do well. As with Brydon's part-mentor Steve Coogan, it only works if it is very close to the bone. What I mean is that Alan Partridge was so successful because you always beleived that there was a lot of Partridge in Coogan.

You can see episode three on http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/, and for those with access to BBC3 it is on again tonight at 11.20 pm.