Spiral Notebook: The joy of Lutfur Rahman, direct to your living room

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

For those who observe Tower Hamlets Council closely or - for health and safety reasons - at arm's length, Monday's Panorama would have contained just the one shock amid the welter allegations of mismanagement, cronyism and self-promotion.

TV blog: 16 reasons why Top Gear and Sons Of Anarchy are the same programme, only different

ENTERTAINMENT

One is a tale of rogues blasting rival gangs in violent street brawls and the other is Sons Of Anarchy. What are the other themes the two programmes got in common.

TV preview: Father Figure (BBC)

If you put the expression “Mrs Brown’s Boys” into Babelfish.com and bat it back and forth around the continents, it comes back as “male infant covered in sticky chocolate”.

Which must have given comedian Jason Byrne an idea. Just the one, mind, but, if he played his cards right, told it with an Irish accent (mainly because he’s Irish) and threw in a toilet gag he could spin the skit into a six-part sitcom.