Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding ... In terms of becoming household names, comedy duo Lip Service have probably still to surpass Cannon and Ball. But their latest spoof, a peep into the twilight world of fading celebrities, aims for an obvious target. Anthony Chalmers and Isobel Trilling are daytime television's most fractious married couple. He is the one with a floppy fringe, childish enthusiasm and wandering hands; she is older and shoots glances of frigid irritation whenever he interrupts her. These days they are banished to an obscure digital network ("If you get to the shopping channels you've gone too far!") but the show is a nostalgic trawl through the ups and downs - mostly downs, it must be said - of their long association with light entertainment.
The format is really an excuse for a string of genre-specific parodies that Lip Service do so well. The pick of these is a gritty, kitchen-sink vignette in which the young Tony appears with a falcon on his wrist. "It's to symbolise all the beauty and freedom that we poor working-class northerners will never know," he explains.
Tony's escalating alcoholism makes them seem more Punch and Judy than Richard and Judy, but the chat show format is redeemed by a round of their latest vehicle: a phone-in quiz called Celebrity Wheelie Bins, in which the hosts rake through a famous person's rubbish and viewers try to guess who it might be. I'm surprised no one has commissioned it yet. Dale Winton as a dustbin man, anyone?
