New comedy show for Amstell

Popworld presenter and stand-up Simon Amstell is set to front a new Sunday afternoon show for Channel 4.

He’s about to film a pilot for The Morning After Show, a combination of comedy sketches and celebrity interviews.

Talkback Thames, which is making the pilot, say, it “aims to be in the same vein as Lee and Herring's This Morning with Richard not Judy”.

Barunka O'Shaughnessy, of Wicker Woman comedy troupe Population3, will also appear in the show.

The pilot is being recorded in London next Tuesday, with an eye to it becoming a series.

Meanwhile, BBC1 is launching a new prime-time panel game based on the idea of celebrity.

Two teams of comics will compete in the new show, 29 Minutes Of Fame, to air in the new year.

The show, part of BBC1’s winter schedules unveiled today, has been devised by the creators of Whose Line Is In Anyway?

A BBC spokesman said: “The show takes two teams of well-known faces from the world of comedy and makes them battle it out over a series of rounds to uncover who knows the most about anyone with an ounce of celebrity – from Albert Einstein to Kylie Minogue.”

The first show will be recorded on January 19.

The BBC1 winter schedule also includes The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, in which Barker and Corbett introduce classic scenes from their show, and The World According To Bex, starring Spaced’s Jessica Stephenson as a secretary stuck in a dead-end life.

Published: 1 Dec 2004