BBC reveals its comedy curios

Including a Madness sitcom and an early version of Borat

Obscure comedy gems - including a sitcom starring Madness and Sacha Baron Cohen's first incarnation of Borat - are to get a rare airing on BBC Two tonight.

The channel is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an hour-long compilation of obscurities from its comedy archive.

The Comedy Vaults: BBC Two’s Hidden Treasure also includes footage of Dudley Moore and Peter Cook in their stage show Behind The Fridge, which has not been shown on British TV for more than 40 years, and Stephen Fry hosting his first episode of QI in 2002.

There is also footage from Miranda Hart’s Joke Shop, a TV adaptation of her Radio 2 show from 2008, which would eventually became the hugely successful Miranda, and a recently discovered performance from Alan Bennett in his 1966 series On The Margin, which had perviously been believed wiped.

Another curio is the 2000 sketch series Bruiser, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who co-wrote the show with a team that included Richard Ayoade and Ricky Gervais. Other performers to appear include Olivia Colman, Martin Freeman (pictured in the show) and Matthew Holness.

Then there is the 1984 sitcom Madness, written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis after the band had appeared on The Young Ones.

The bizarre premise of the sitcom is that Margaret Thatcher was a space alien who had been recalled to Mars – then replaced as Prime Minister by Suggs with his bandmates as the Cabinet, who met in a room above a cafe.

Another sketch sees Baron Cohen's as an Albanian called Christo in the 1998 sketch series Comedy Nation. He had previously developed the character for Granada TV’s F2F and the Paramount Comedy Channel, now Comedy Central.