No laughing matter TV review by

Vinnie's decline is run pretty bloody close by the involvement of three genuine erstwhile heroes of The Fast Show in the lazy, thoughtless, comedy-free load of old

bollocks that is Jumpers For Goalposts (Sky One).

Paul Whitehouse first introduced the crazed reminiscences of geriatric TV soccer pundit Ron Manager on BBC2, supported

by the archetypal gruff Scot-

tish witterings of Tommy Stein, played by Simon Williams, and vapid smoothie anchorman Clive

Graham (Simon Day).

An inventively surreal parody of the bland posturing passed off as insight by football's more elderly statesmen, Ron Manager and his addled sidekicks were a joy.

Now, though, Whitehouse has followed Henry Enfield's lead in decamping to Sky for megabucks and providing very little that's watchable in return.

Jumpers For Goalposts uneasily unites its three fictional characters - Manager, Stein, Graham - with real-life celebs in a low-rent version of the dog-eared quiz show A Question of Sport. While Whitehouse and Co sporadically rerun their old Fast Show catchphrases, the real-life celebs seem slightly baffled about what's going on. They're not the only ones.

Because, unlike Reeves and Mortimer's risk-taking quiz-show spoof Shooting Stars, which turned every celebrity contestant into a

target for its own barmy humour, Jumpers For Goalposts has lamentably opted not to ask its three stars to write more than 30 seconds of new material per episode, or think about anything other than the size of the Sky cheque they're banking.

If you haven't stumped up the spondos for a Sky subscription, you can feel very pleased with yourself - as there's no way you'll have to endure this insulting rubbish ever transferring to terrestrial telly. Shame on you, Messrs Whitehouse, Williams, and Day.

Contrastingly, practical comedy insights - plus a few laughs - are in abundance in the fly-on-the-dressing-room-wall documentary series Working The Room (BBC Choice). Narrowly managing to avoid cosy collusion with its subjects, Working The Room is a deft profile of the daily operation of Scotland's sole year-round comedy venue, The Stand.

Set up full-time three years ago by Jane Mackay and Tommy Sheppard, The Stand has always avowed to grow its own performers, and it was thus instructive to eavesdrop on the newcomers' class in hands-on mirth-induction run with care

and expertise by feisty stand-up schoolma'am Susan Morrison.

It was also mighty funny to hear that laconic master of the oblique Caledonian barb, Arnold Brown, in full spate at The Stand during last year's Edinburgh Fringe. In addition, the programme introduced me to a native act I should already be familiar with. Shamefully, though, I've so far missed seeing Alan Miller in the flesh. As Working The Room belatedly revealed to me, he's a rudely improper cross between Ali G and John Hegley, albeit minus the latter's poetry and the former's baggy trousers.

In addition, Miller may have Tourette's syndrome, too. He is funny, though, which is all that matters with comedy. Ensure that, like me, you see Alan Miller at The Stand soonliest.

John Cleese has long been the most saturnine man in comedy. Boy, does old anglepoise legs take being funny serious. Laugh? Until I saw him presenting The Human Face (BBC1), I was sure he'd forgotten how to.

Evidently made for mass consumption in the United States, The Human Face is a stab at what might be termed fizzog-focused popular bio-social anthropology. It makes its case by jetting lavishly around the globe; lightly grilling a few anecdotal all-American academics in American institutes of learning, and placing Cleese in a few knockabout sketches opposite pain-in-the-arse aristo airhead Liz Hurley.

As you might expect, Cleese portrays the bumbling boffin, while Hurley is his coolly sexy white-coated laboratory assistant. The sketches aren't particularly funny or educational - but at least in one of them Hurley suffered the fate we've surely all wished upon her at some time or another: she had her face bloodily ripped clean off, exposing the 44 muscles beneath.

This thrillsome act was all done via TV techno-trickery, of course - unlike Cleese's frankly less-than-utterly-essential first-person jaunt to India. There Cleese visited one of the many laughter clubs which seem to have established that, whether you fake it or whether it's genuine, a right good chortle is nature's best medicine, heh heh heh.

Real or feigned, laughter apparently combats stress and boosts the immune system. But, trust me, tittering may not be so efficacious when you've got a broken leg. The show's best bit was its least funny: when a facial operation allowed a little girl to form her first-ever smile. Awww . . .

Despite my natural inclination towards being a groovy, tomorrowtastic, now-a-go-go kinda guy, I keep getting a similar warm glow whenever I watch Time Team

Special (C4). What is it that's

so strangely satisfying about watching these staid-looking archaeology doofuses forever a-delvin' into the past and getting whacked out on mouldy twelfth-century Romanesque canthus carvings? Compelling it is, though.

However, this week's edition was a little less fascinating than usual, to be honest. It returned in over-

repetitious detail to one of the show's previous digs, the site of St Mary's, in Coventry, a medieval cathedral that was demolished on the orders of Henry VIII.

As ever, enthusiastic host Tony ''Baldrick'' Robinson hopped around like a three-legged chicken on an electric griddle. But there

was something missing: mummified corpses and long-buried skulls. Not once did Tony utter

his favourite shrill cry: ''More skeletons! Great news!''

Speaking of biological realism, there was great news on the ad front about Kotex and Tena Lady Ultra Mini. These two feminine hygiene products are to be commended for avoiding all coyness.

Not for them any bowdlerised demonstration of their absorbency via cartoon graphics featuring blue-coloured liquids. Kotex features a red blob; Tena Lady, a green gush. Unlike Jumpers For Goalposts, it's a major advance on TV's honesty front.