EVERYONE IS SEATED. A HUSH DESCENDS ON THE HALL. YES, JOSIE LONG HAS JUST TOLD A JOKE.

ONE PERSON AT THE BACK OF THE ROOM CLAPS FOR TWO SECONDS, THEN STOPS, EMBARASSED. AS MIXED BY AVALON TELEVISION THIS SOUNDS LIKE A STANDING OVATION.

Okay, now, the show's already over-running so let's get through the usual opening jokes quickly. David Walliams swam the channel - well, he's used to greasing himself up and grabbing onto a 'buoy'... check. It's really great to see so many new faces here tonight, at least fifteen of which belong to David Gest... check. Who can forget that Tourettes bloke on Big Brother saying "bollocks" all the time - I hear they've already signed him up to be the warm up man on the next series of 'My Hero'... check. And Chris Langham really is in 'The Thick Of It'... check. Something about some potentially successful show which could 'go nuclear'...blah blah Russian spy, blah... check...

Throwaway mention of Mitchell & Webb simply to...

FX: LIVESTOCK BRAYING LOUDLY

THROWS AWARD AT THE X FACTOR TABLE - IT BOUNCES OFF SHARON OSBOURNE'S TIGHTLY-PULLED FACE, SHOOTS LIKE A BULLET THROUGH THE ROOF AND FLIES INTO A CONCENTRIC ORBIT AROUND THE EARTH.

And don't forget you can text us throughout the show and share your views on the proceedings - just like on those Big Brother shows. Hopefully ours will be a bit more literate though.

So here we go, ladies and gentlemen. The Tumbleweeds. An acknowledgement of the toss, the clag, the rotten and the utterly diabolical in the wacky, knockabout world of comedy. And please please don't be offended if your favourite show has been voted rubbish by a lot of people. Simply accept it as the ultimate confirmation that there are people out there who are far more intelligent than you and then move on. Hey, it's only comedy!

FX: 'RADIOPHONIC STOMACH' (APPLAUSE)

But Billy shall not have fallen under that bus in vain - there are many comedy practitioners of equal merit willing to carry his mantle. With that in mind, we announce the award for the Worst Comedy Newcomer.

	Worst Comedy Newcomer Charlotte Church The Welsh Catherine Zeta Jones 48% of the overall vote "The only one I've seen out of those nominees, but a worthy choice nonetheless. Who in their right mind thought Charlotte Church has the capacity to deliver a joke, or has even the merest talent for anything comedic? This show was simply another Friday Night Project - screeching, unfunny, and a damning testament to the astonishing lack of quality control that has plagued Channel 4 for years now. It's been recommissioned too, so I'm personally looking forward to more of those 'humorous' opening songs that went through me like nails down a blackboard (presumably written on which was 'This is what Friday nights on Channel 4 are now, so lap it up you unthinking cunts')." - JPA "Like many other worthless people, Church is famous for being famous, and after attempting unsuccessfully to become a popular singer (having fucked her voice as a teenager), she has washed up on the shores of comedy entertainment. Neither comedic nor entertaining." - Jonathan McCalmont "The very fact Charlotte Church is classed as comedy shows how far we have sunk." - Dan Smith RUNNERS UP: Lucy Montgomery (32%) Josie Long (19%) PREVIOUS WINNER: Mark Dolan

Charlotte Church's reputation has certainly seen better days. As a cutesy 'Voice Of An Angel' singing sensation elegantly warbling for Heads of State, she was adored by blue-rinsed grannies and blue-faced Matthew Wrights alike. As a careerless, top-heavy fifteen-year-old she was adored by laddish dickheads on the net, grateful for the opportunity to share jokey date-rape fantasies while logging onto that scummy website which counted down the days until she was 'legal'. But as a rather tedious twenty-year-old - who only ceases her insipid, gossipy jabbering long enough to fall out of a taxi - she's successfully managed to reinvent herself for the noughties as perfect late-night Channel 4 fodder.

It'll be short-lived, sadly. C4 comedy supremo Andrew Newman was recently observed logging onto www.the-charlotte-church-off-the-boil-o-meter.com, a site which counts down the days until she turns 22 - at which point she'll be considered a bit long in the tooth for the Hollyoaks: Shagging Plots demographic and will be unceremoniously shipped off to Songs Of Praise to perform raspy-voiced hymn duets with Aled Jones forevermore. The word on the media wall is that Newman already has the ideal replacement pencilled in - it's just a matter of getting James Harries to grow a nicer pair of tits.

Sadly, Charlotte Church can't be here tonight to accept this award. So here's David Mitchell, who can be here. And there. And bloody everywhere. No, stay in your seat, Mitchell. I'll get someone to pass it down to you. Don't catch his eye - he'll see it as a viable contract...

The redundant debate staggers on: which style of comedy performance yields the best results? Traditional comic projection versus modern dramatic realism. Well, as luck would have it, the Tumbleweed award for Worst Comedy Actor unites both camps as it goes to a man who can't seem to get a tangible grip on either.

	Worst Comedy Actor Richard Ayoade How does disqualification sound? Not too good, eh? 42% of the overall vote "It's the fact that he's so unspectacular in his awfulness, he just does everything poorly, no timing, no range, no voices (sorry, one, that 'saaad' pratty effort, sounding a bit like what used to be called 'anoraks' in the eighties) not even a face for comedy and certainly no gags, there's just nothing there. And so he shouldn't by rights get my back up as much as obvious clanging great look-at-me tossers like Brand or Wooton, but the people he works with, the jobs he lands, it's all so completely inexplicable what they see in him or how they think his presence will add anything, and so he makes me bristle like nobody else does. What on earth are you doing here at all? What's your Richard Ayoade top moment, Richard Ayoade fans?" - James Taylor "For every joke that Ayoade delivered successfully in The It Crowd, he ruined another three with his poor timing and non-existent range. His contributions to Time Trumpet were bland, and Man To Man With Dean Lerner was the least ambitious, most unimaginative show since Darkplace. Well done." - Robot DeNiro "Ayoade's one successful comedy role was playing someone with no comic timing. Why has nobody noticed this?" - James Wilkinson RUNNERS UP: Ricky Gervais (30%) Noel Fielding (27%) PREVIOUS WINNER: Marc Wootton

Yes, Ayoade's furious assault on our collective comedy senses continues, raw and untamed.

Sadly, Richard Ayoade can't be here tonight to accept this award as he's appearing at the Old Vic in a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth, understudying the Forest of Dunsinane. So, if you happen to be going along, do please pop backstage and tell him we at The Tumbleweeds Macbeth wish him all the Macbeth very very best of Macbeth luck in the Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth role.

	Worst Comedy Actress Ashley Jensen Whine for the woman who made the rain come 38% of the overall vote "Maggie, her character in Extras only has one character trait: stupid. Unfortunately, Jensen couldn't even make that funny. At times, in the first series, Maggie was actually quite sympathetic, this time she was merely irritating and clumsily chucked into storylines even if she had little to do." - Rupert Pupkin "Gervais has nicked many character traits from The Office and so fair all have failed. Example: the crap Chris Finch from last series, but Ashley as a lazy replica of Dawn from the Office really takes the biscuit. A really poor comedy performer who surely without Gervais should be doing something else non TV related with her time. Pottery?" - Joseph Heeran "Manages to imbue an essentially emotionally and mentally retarded character with all the humanity and soul of a dead-eyed cod." - Ignatius_S RUNNERS UP: Katherine Parkinson (33%) Lucy Montgomery (28%) PREVIOUS WINNER: Catherine Tate

Sadly, Ashley Jensen couldn't be here to collect her award tonight in person as she's also appearing in that production of Macbeth mentioned earlier. Lady Macbeth is of course a very complicated character to play and it takes a very special performing talent to fully convey that descent from harridan-like guile and cunning to tortured, haunted madness over the course of the performance. As luck would have it, Ashsley's playing the drunk bloke who does the brewer's droop gag, so no worries there.

Ashley is currently waiting backstage at the Old Vic so I'm pleased to say we can now go over, exclusively, live, via satellite... to the rest of the Tumbleweed Awards 2006.

Welcome back. Now we move on, with stealth and determination, to the Worst Comedy Entertainment Personality. It comes to something when Leigh Frances manages to squeeze out a parody of a comedy act that's funnier than the people he's parodying, ladies and gentlemen. But in ten seconds of high-concept screaming, Frances effectively provided more entertainment than the entire collective output of our winners over the course of twelve months.

	Worst Comedy Entertainment Personality Justin Lee Collins/Alan Carr The Friday Night Rejects 58% of the overall vote "It's difficult to imagine a more appalling TV partnership than that of Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins. Jim Davidson and Nikki from Big Brother perhaps? Adolf Hitler and Peter Sutcliffe? Nah, nothing could possibly come close." - Rupert Pupkin "How? Why? Not only do this duo not have any chemistry, they seem to suck the life out of their audience, their guests and every one of the already tired formats that TFNP offers us. They leave me feeling limp and flaccid, in fact they're the entertainment equivalent of those new condoms with anesthetic in them." - Evil Knevil "Affronts to humanity." - Stephen Graham RUNNERS UP: Alex Zane (26%) Charlotte Chuch (15%) PREVIOUS WINNER: Justin Lee Collins

And, somewhat inevitably, the winner of the Worst Entertainment Programme award swims straight up the rear passage of...

	Worst Entertainment Programme The Friday Night Project Still on, is it? 43% of the overall vote "In its second year, its presence in the Friday night comedy slot is an insult to all those great comedies that have come before it, and a vehicle for two of the least talented comedians to emerge in the last 25 years." - Jonathan McCalmont "TFNP comes from a long line of abortions that constitute Channel 4's light entertainment lineup. But even this is qualitatively worse. I'm of the opinion that pub opening hours were extended simply so that we could stay out to avoid it." - Evil Knevil "Whatever runs a close second, but at least it had the excuse of being amateur, rather than cynical nasty idiot-fodder that bounced along the very pit of entertainment." - rudi RUNNERS UP: Whatever (31%) The Charlotte Church Show (24%) PREVIOUS WINNER: Balls Of Steel

Marginally more watchable than the original Jimmy Carr line-up, admittedly. But when you stop to think what could be filling that slot... Go on, just imagine it for a second. Got it? Good, right, well you can bet that Channel 4 have imagined it too. And then discarded it outright because they simply assume it wouldn't play to the average Big Brother punter. And maybe they're right.

	CAPTION: 'THE LAUGHTER MEDICINE - THE DEATH OF BRITISH SITCOM - OR IS IT?' GRAMS: 'GOLDEN YEARS' BY DAVID BOWIE MONTAGE OF CLIPS OF FAWLTY TOWERS, TILL DEATH US DO PART, THE LIKELY LADS, BLACKADDER GOES FORTH, DENNIS POTTER'S BLACKEYES, KENNETH CLARKE'S CIVILISATION, DAVID BRENT DOING THE DANCE, THE BERLIN WALL BEING KNOCKED DOWN AND THAT DRUNK SNAIL FROM NATIONWIDE. ALAN YENTOB DESCENDS ONTO THE PICTURE AS A KEYED-IN OVERLAY, SUSPENDED BY HELIUM BALLOONS AND WAVING HIS DICK ABOUT. HE SURVEYS THE MONTAGE WITH A RAISED EYEBROW AND THEN TURNS TO THE CAMERA. YENTOB It's often been said that trying to come up with an original premise for a situation comedy is rather akin to attempting to discover a sin that hasn't been committed yet! Certainly, the so-called 'Golden Age' threw up a multitude of such sins, not all of them necessarily classic television... TURNS BACK TO THE MONTAGE IN TIME TO SEE FOOTAGE OF BOBBY KENNEDY BEING SHOT DEAD. CLOSE UP OF YENTOB'S FACE AS HE TURNS TO CAMERA AGAIN AND PULLS A PANTOMIMETIC 'OH DEAR' EXPRESSION. CUT TO A MODERN DAY LIVING ROOM. A FAMILY IS GATHERED AROUND THE TV WATCHING 'I'M A CELEBRITY' WHILE DRIBBLING INTO THEIR EVENING MEAL. YENTOB'S HEAD SUDDENLY SPROUTS UP FROM A FLOWER POT ON TOP OF THE TV WITH ACCOMPANYING LEAVES AND BUDS. HE RAISES ANOTHER EYEBROW. YENTOB In today's TV climate however, this is a far more familiar scene. Where once the whole family gathered together as one to watch 'Hancock's Half Hour', they now instead watch 'I'm A Celebrity' or 'Big Brother'. So... why is this? YENTOB JUMPS FROM THE FLOWERPOT ONTO A SANDWICH. THE DAUGHTER OF THE FAMILY PICKS IT UP AND EATS IT. CUT TO THE INSIDE OF HER STOMACH. YENTOB WADES, CAREFREE, THROUGH HALF-DIGESTED FOODSTUFFS AND STRANDS OF MUCUS AS IF IT'S JUST ANOTHER BBC CORRIDOR. YENTOB The answer is simple. Tony Hancock died in 1968 and stopped making 'Hancock's Half Hour' shortly after that. So is the Big Brother house simply the Railway Cuttings of the noughties? Or is it more a case of 'I'm A Blood Donor, Get Me Out Of Here'! YENTOB JOKILY HOLDS HIS NOSE AS IF PREPARING TO SWIM UNDER WATER, THEN SUBMERGES HIMSELF INTO A MASS OF GUTS AND BOWELS. SHOT OF DAUGHTER ENTERING FAMILY BATHROOM. CLOSES DOOR. FROM OUTSIDE WE HEAR THE TOILET FLUSH YENTOB (SHOUTS) That's the question we'll be asking tonight as we... PICTURE SUDDENLY SPEEDS UP UNTIL IT BECOMES A BLUR

ROSS
Hang on a sec, I'll just fast wind through to the good bit.

	CAPTION: CYNDI LAUPER LIVE IN CONCERT LAUPER BOUNDS ONSTAGE. 'SIGN ZONE' INTERPRETER IN THE CORNER LAUPER Hi y'all. Are you ready to rock? AUDIENCE We are. PICTURE SPEEDS UP AGAIN, IN REVERSE

ROSS
Whoops, sorry - wound it forward a bit too far there. Back a bit...

	BLACK AND WHITE BBC LOGO CONTINUITY ANNOUNCER And now on BBC Nothing, it's time for the first ever edition of The Sky Is Night. CUT TO A BABY PATRICK MOORE IN A PUSHCHAIR. TAPE EJECTS.

ROSS
Alright, you get the idea. Now let's do the Worst Sitcom...

	Worst Sitcom Extras - Series 2 The bit with the cat and the scissors was funny 42% of the overall vote "I don't think anything in British comedy this year made me *angrier* than seeing Stephen Fry turn up to trot out a cliched Oscar Wilde quote, while simultaneously serving as a mouth-piece for Ricky Gervais' invariably self-fellating views on comedy. I mean, even Keith Harris had the nous to turn this show down. Fry though...It made those fucking Twinings adverts look dignified by comparison. He should don a sheet and visit David Mitchell as the Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come. Creatively bankrupt whoredom awaits, David. I love how the main conceit of Extras largely goes flying out the window at the end of series 1, because Gervais and Merchant very obviously received their Seinfeld season 4 DVD's as they were writing episode 6, and decided to just steal the story arc from that for series 2 instead. The *bastards* even took the Mulva storyline from The Junior Mint - a truly exceptional bit of comedy writing - stripped away all the brilliance from it, and all we were left with was a standard bit of Gervaisian 'awkward silence "comedy"' as the diluted remains. The second series of Extras was largely just Gervais smugly patting himself on the back for half an hour each week. "I prefer the edgier comedies on BBC2", I mean, just fuck off." - Neil "No real opinion on Blessed, Grown Ups or Hyperdrive, but Extras was the worst of this lot because of its "anti-PC" mentality, its idea that if you put characters into uncomfortable situations and cynically have them say or do taboo things as a release, then it might be some kind of masterpiece in daring comedy. Also the lines that every other character says "sounds" as though it could have been spoken by Gervais/Merchant. The US version of The Office is proof of this. Not appealing if you don't buy into Gervais/Merchant as comedy gods." - Kaprisky "Re Ricky Gervais: Change 'truthiness' to something like 'comedyness' and I think you've got a fair description of what Ricky Gervais does - 'Extras' being the prime example. It *looks* like comedy, feels as if it should be comedy, but in the end.. isn't. The worst thing about it is that so many have hailed as original what is actually a photocopy of a xerox of a photocopy of a comedy show. Ricky Gervais: an icon of anxiety for all the wrong reasons, an icon for people who need the sound of laughter around even when nothing particularly amusing is happening, and consequently the most depressing peddler of comedy as product right now. Get him off the telly and into the office in which he belongs." - IanW RUNNERS UP: Hyperdrive (27%) Grown Ups (20%) Blessed (9%) PREVIOUS WINNER: Max and Paddy

Ricky Gervais' Extras there, Series 2 of a situation comedy which succeeded in dropping both the 'situation' and the 'comedy' (such as it was) from its previous series in favour of dramatic re-enactments of Gervais' self-fellating broadsheet interviews from the previous year.

Cecil & Riley's Hyperdrive achieved a level of stale tedium in its premiere series that Red Dwarf only fully managed after eight increasingly depressing fights between Grant & Naylor. Ben Elton's Blessed, meanwhile, attempted to populate a comedy-drama set-up with high-concept trad-com caricatures. And, much as it might be tempting to blame the show's awfulness on this rather glaring error of directorial judgement, it certainly didn't prove a hindrance to Happy Families twenty one bloody years ago. As for Grown Ups... Aw, sod 'em, I can't be bothered.

So, kudos to them all. And, before we leave the world of sitcoms, just a quick reminder that The Last Laugh returns to BBC3 in the New Year, where Marks & Gran will once again be presenting budding comedy hopefuls with a half-written comedy script they've devised, and inviting them to complete it. Makes a change - usually they just allow them to be broadcast as they are.

Okay, we'll be back on the next page with some more results. And don't forget, you can press the blue button on your remote control right now.

It doesn't actually do anything in terms of this show, but you can definitely press it, no worries there.

INTRO

ARRIVALS

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