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Johnny Vegas and writer Graham Duff are bringing their cult sitcom Ideal to the stage to celebrate its 20th anniversary, here are the details.

Johnny Vegas – real name Michael Pennington – began his career as a esoteric stand up comic. In his performances he often incorporated pottery, using the skills he learnt completing a BA in Art and Ceramics.

He worked his way up the comedy circuit, eventually joining Stewart Lee, Simon Munnery and Roger Mann in comedy troupe Club Zarathustra in the late 1990s. And the following decade, he properly broke into television.

Ideal is a sitcom written by Graham Duff. that premiered in 2005, Vegas starred as Moz, a drug dealer in Manchester, and his eclectic clientele with whom he does business in his squalid flat. Regular characters included Cartoon Head, a sinister, silent figure never seen without his mouse mask head, Nicola Reynolds as Moz’s girlfriend Nicki,. Duff...

Kill List Ben Wheatley returns to the small screen this month with Channel 4 zombie comedy series, Generation Z. Here’s a trailer:

Kill List director Ben Wheatley is about to television with this autumn’s Generation Z, which Wheatley has written and directed for Channel 4.

According to the British Comedy Guide, the series is a horror satire which pits a group of small-town teenagers (the gen-z of the title) against a horde of toxin-infected, rabid pensioners. It’s a little bit like Rabid Grannies, then, but with a distinctly political, post-austerity, post hope-for-the-future spin.

As the synopsis points out, it’s about “the increasingly stark divisions between generations,” and depicts “a modern Britain at war with itself. Sounds good!

The cast is itself a platter of multi-generational comedy talent. Elder states-people of telly Sue Johnston (The Royle Family), Anita Dobson (EastEnders) and Robert Lindsay (Citizen Smith) are joined by...

Louisa Mellor Sep 26, 2016

When life hurts, well-crafted, traditional sitcom like Count Arthur Strong can be an indispensable salve…

There’s a period a little while after a family death, after the days spent in a traffic jam of errands, decisions and phone calls, when you have to merge back into the regular lane. Normal life demands to re-start. The fridge needs filling and the lawn needs mowing, even if, impossibly, the person who usually does both has vanished forever.

For my family like most others, normal life means watching television. Telly is the cradle that rocked us through the decades. Whatever happened to us happened against a backdrop of soaps and sitcoms.

Losing our dad though, changed things. In the flayed-skin sensitivity of the days around his funeral, flicking through the channels meant running a gauntlet. A murder on EastEnders brought unwelcome ambulances and coroners back into our living room.

Carol Vorderman looks likely to wed for a third time. The 'Loose Women' chat show host could be seen walking down the aisle with Raf pilot Graham Duff in the very near future, according to her co-star Sherrie Hewson. Sherrie let slip on the ITV panel programme: ''The 'Loose Women' are all getting married. Denise [Welch] is first in July and I met Carol Vorderman's new man the other day. He is beautiful.'' The close pals are attending Denise's wedding to Lincoln Townley this summer and it appears mum-of-two Carol will be next in line. The former 'Countdown' star's first marriage to Royal Navy...

Carol Vorderman and her boyfriend want to make a TV show about flying. The 52-year-old star thinks there is plenty of scope for a really ''interesting'' programme about being airborne after hearing so many great tales from her 37-year-old lover Graham Duff, who works as a pilot. She said: ''My bloke is a pilot and I'd love to do a show about flying, fronted by the two of us. There are so many characters and stories from that area of life, it'd be so interesting. Watch this space!'' But before such a programme can take flight, the 'Loose Women' presenter can...

Carol Vorderman and her boyfriend want to make a TV show about flying. The 52-year-old star thinks there is plenty of scope for a really ''interesting'' programme about being airborne after hearing so many great tales from her 37-year-old lover Graham Duff, who works as a pilot. She said: ''My bloke is a pilot and I'd love to do a show about flying, fronted by the two of us. There are so many characters and stories from that area of life, it'd be so interesting. Watch this space!'' But before such a programme can take flight, the 'Loose Women' presenter can...

Carol Vorderman ''couldn't stop eating'' on the set of her new TV show. The 52-year-old presenter fronts new culinary programme 'Food Glorious Food' and had to go on a strict detox diet when filming ended because she had piled on the pounds. She admitted: ''I was eating the equivalent of seven or eight meals a day. I couldn't stop. ''I did [the detox] for a couple of weeks after, I just had to. ''There's no point not eating with a show like that.'' As well as the detox, Carol also credits her active sex life with 37-year-old boyfriend Graham Duff for helping her get slim...

Carol Vorderman ''couldn't stop eating'' on the set of her new TV show. The 52-year-old presenter fronts new culinary programme 'Food Glorious Food' and had to go on a strict detox diet when filming ended because she had piled on the pounds. She admitted: ''I was eating the equivalent of seven or eight meals a day. I couldn't stop. ''I did [the detox] for a couple of weeks after, I just had to. ''There's no point not eating with a show like that.'' As well as the detox, Carol also credits her active sex life with 37-year-old boyfriend Graham Duff for helping her get slim...

One of Britain's Prince William's friends is dating Carol Vorderman. Raf pilot Graham Duff, 37, was invited to the royal wedding between William and Catherine Middleton, and met the former 'Countdown' presenter at a charity ball for his squad. The former Red Arrows stunt pilot was based at Raf Scampton, Lincolnshire, in 2008 when the prince was training at nearby Raf Cranwell. Graham even hosted a beer and pie evening at his local village pub for the prince and other pilots. It is also said both the prince, 30, and his wife have both stayed at the squadron leader's house. The relationship between Graham - who is separated from his wife Katie - and Carol, 51, is going...

Carol Vorderman is dating a former Red Arrows stunt pilot. The former Countdown presenter has been dating the squadron leader Graham Duff, 37, for the past month, reports The Mirror. The 51-year-old invited her new partner on set at the weekend during the filming of cooking talent show Food Glorious Food. A friend of the star said: "It is very early days, but Carol is very happy with Graham. "She has been on a few dates this year, but this is the first man that could become ­something serious." Vorderman's spokesman confirmed that (more)...

The cancelled Johnny Vegas-led dark BBC3 sitcom "Ideal" is becoming a feature film thanks to its producer Baby Cow reports Chortle.

The UK show ran for seven series and 53 episodes from 2005 to last year with the action set mostly in the flat of a small-time Manchester drug dealer named Moz (Vegas).

Moz is visited by an eclectic array of characters, usually played by various comedians and the odd recognisable actor, who buy cannabis and converse with him.

Baby Cow CEO Henry Normal says the film is "going to be set in the same place, with many of the same characters. We even brought the physical set from the BBC, our co-producers on the TV series… We are aiming for it to be quite a dark psychological comedy-thriller."

Creator Graham Duff is working on a script with filming aiming to begin early next year. Ben Wheatley, who helmed many episodes of the show,...

The BBC’s television channel aimed squarely at 16-34 year olds, BBC Three, is sadly probably better known in the U.K. for its shoddy sitcoms than it is for quality broadcasts. Crude, unsophisticated, and just plain not funny, the channel’s early programming was typified by the awful and long-lived “Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.” That’s not to say the channel’s entire comedy output since its 2003 launch has been awful – “Little Britain,” “Being Human” and “Gavin & Stacey” in particular have experienced a great deal of success . One of BBC Three’s strangest and most interesting shows though was a dark comedy called “Ideal” which ran for seven seasons between 2005 and 2011.

The show was about a small-time cannabis dealer from Salford called Moz (played by comedian Johnny Vegas). The show took place almost entirely in Moz’s bedsit and saw a variety of bizarre...

Johnny Vegas sitcom Ideal is reportedly to be made into a film. Baby Cow, which produced the show about small-time Manchester drug dealer Moz for BBC Three, will also be behind the movie. Graham Duff, the programme's creator, is currently writing the script, and filming is planned for early next year. Ben Wheatley, who directed 14 episodes of the series, will also helm the big-screen version. Chortle quotes chief executive of Baby Cow Henry Normal as saying: "It's going to be set in the same place, with many of the same characters. We even brought the physical set from the BBC, our co-producers on the TV series. "We are aiming for it to be quite a dark psychological (more)...

Johnny Vegas has hit out at BBC Three controller Zai Bennett over the axing of his sitcom Ideal earlier this year. The quirky comedy about drug dealer Moz ran for seven series and its final run in early 2011 was achieving some of the show's highest ever ratings. However, the BBC opted to ditch the programme in what was described by writer Graham Duff as a "clean sweep" for the channel. Vegas lashed out at Bennett's decision when collecting a 'Best Performance' gong at last weekend's Television (more)...

BBC Three controller Zai Bennet has dropped Johnny Vegas sitcom Ideal after its seventh season. Ideal finished its last run with an increased average audience of 535,000, but the quirky show about drug dealer Moz will not be returning. Ideal writer Graham Duff broke the news, commenting: "As some of you may have heard, the BBC have decided against commissioning an 8th series of Ideal. "The reason given was that the new channel controller wanted to make a clean sweep." He continued: "It is a source of both pride and frustration that, at the point of cancellation, Ideal was attracting its biggest ever audiences, its highest-profile guest stars and its best ever reviews. "And (more)...

Chicago – In our latest blockbuster edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 30 admit-two movie passes plus three prize packs up for grabs to the new film “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”!

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Gambon, John Hurt, Evanna Lynch, Domhnall Gleeson, Clémence Poésy, Warwick Davis, Graham Duff, Anthony Allgood and Rusty Goffe from director David Yates and writer Steve Kloves based on the novel by J.K. Rowling.

The film opens everywhere on July 15, 2011. Along with our 30 admit-two advance-screening movie passes, we also have prize packs up for grabs to three readers! Each prize pack includes:

Two “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” T-shirts Two “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” hats One “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” soundtrack

To...

The Culture Show | Andrew Marr's Megacities | Bums, Boobs And Botox | In Confidence | In Confidence | Ideal

The Culture Show

7pm, BBC2

Unusually, the biggest name on tonight's show is that of one of the reporters: David Attenborough, who presents a digression on the subject of John Craxton, as a new exhibition of the late artist's work opens at Tate Britain. Elsewhere, in a typically bountiful lineup, Mark Kermode speaks to Philip Seymour Hoffman about his directorial debut, Jack Goes Boating, Jacques Peretti meets writer Iain Sinclair, and Michael Smith attempts a Friday-night art crawl in south London. Andrew Mueller

Andrew Marr's Megacities

8pm, BBC1

Andrew Marr takes us on a tour of the "megacity", the habitat of the future. There are already 21 cities with populations of more than 10 million and plenty more on the way. For the first time in human history, there are now more people across the...