...but Lab Rats is axed

Chris Addison is to make an appearance in E4 youth drama Skins.

The stand-up and star of BBC Two’s The Thick Of It is to play a ‘smug bully’ of a headmaster in the show.

Addison said he was a ‘Cameronian control freak – an uptight, smug bully who, it seems to me, is less interested in teaching than in “fixing” youth’.

The comic admitted that the show made him feel old at the age of 38. He told The Guardian: ‘Skins makes anyone above the age of 23 feel old, and that's one of its great strengths. It's energetic, colourful and full of life in a way that not much drama is on TV these days, so it's a combination of fun and terrifying to watch if you're out of its immediate demographic’.

Addison also revealed that there will be no second series of his over-the-top BBC Two sitcom Lab Rats, which received a lukewarm reaction from critics, and that he is losing his weekly column with the London Evening Standard. ‘They're getting rid of me,’ he said.

Published: 18 Nov 2009