How To Win A Pub Quiz's Alex Love picks his Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites

As Alex Love prepares to perform his show How To Win A Pub Quiz, in three locations in October, he shares some of the comedy performers and shows that have made me a laugh a lot.

1. Lee and Herring’s This Morning With Richard Not Judy Series 2

This is quite possibly my favourite TV series ever. Fist of Fun passed me by at the time, but I discovered Lee and Herring with TMWRNJ when I was 13. It blew my little teenage mind and was a massive influence on my comedy education and taste. 

The first series was great, but the second was where they really hit their stride - right at the point when they realise they’re not getting recommissioned and decided they would try and push things as far as they could get away with. A show like this would never air these days on a Sunday lunchtime on BBC2.

At school, me and my mate, also called Rich, would spend our GCSE German lessons quoting it relentlessly. I would be Stew, Rich would be... Rich. He would also draw a Robbie Williams tattoo on his stomach and make it sing, like Richard Herring did. Unsurprisingly, neither of us passed GCSE German.

The sketches are brilliant and it’s full of catchphrases that are not always appreciated by GCSE German teachers. A stellar supporting cast includes Kevin Eldon, Paul Putner, and Emma Kennedy. The trio combine amazingly in the series, When Things Get Knocked Over, Spill or Fall Out of Fall Out of Cupboards.  

The show feels so cleverly written that it must have taken months to refine, but I later learned it was largely cobbled together in the pub on a Friday evening.

2. The Thick Of It Series 3 

The obvious Armando Iannucci sitcom for this list is I’m Alan Partridge Series 1, which is the peak of Partridge for me and could easily write a Perfect Playlist for moments in that alone. But I have mixed it up and gone with The Thick Of It.

I liked the first couple of series and specials of The Thick Of It, but everything clicked and went up a gear with Series 3. Rebecca Front was a revelation as the hapless minister Nicola Murray. Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker develops greater character depth, instead of just his trademark vitriol. Although there’s still plenty of that. Roger Allam does sterling work as shadow minister, Peter Mannion MP, aka the Mannionator.

But the introduction of Stewart Pearson, the anti-Tucker and based on David Cameron’s guru Steve Hilton, is a magnificent comedy creation. ‘I want to hear some fact-based noise.'

For me, the show reached its pinnacle with the Richard Bacon episode where Malcolm and Stewart are at war in the producers’ room of a radio station, refereed by a beleaguered Sara Pascoe. Knowledge is porridge.

3. Bruce Forsyth

Bruce was so good for so many years and kept performing until even a few years before the end. The king of the call and response catchphrase. Many other quiz show hosts have tried it, myself included, but none have come close to matching him. 

He was so sharp, always willing to improvise, play the moment, and embrace absurdity. This clip is of what many regard as his comeback, hosting Have I Got News For You. This arguably got him the Strictly Come Dancing gig a year later and he was once again a firm fixture of Saturday-night TV.  

I grew up watching him on Saturday nights hosting The Generation Game. But I never expected him to appear in my head at a crucial moment in my life. I was 15 and had the lead in a school production of Return to the Forbidden Planet, mainly because I was one of only three boys at school willing to actually be in it. But my real motive was because there was a girl I really fancied in the year below who was a backing dancer. And if I stuck with it, I might get a chance to speak to her. Needless to say, it went nowhere.  

Anyway, I’d been struggling with my confidence, word-swallowing, and voice projection until about a week before the first performance. Then something finally clicked. On the opening night, something I did got a big laugh. Then I had flashback to an episode of The Generation Game where the contestants would have to act out a scene. One contestant talked over a laugh, only to be promptly told by Bruce: ‘No, wait for the laughs.’

So, I waited on the advice of Bruce before delivering my next line. It was that feeling of getting a room full of 200 people laughing that made me want to get into comedy.

4. Third Rock From The Sun 

I was going to put The Simpsons on this list, but it feels a bit obvious. Instead, I’m going to put Third Rock From The Sun on it, which I don’t think gets enough praise.

While everyone’s attention in the 1990s was on Friends, Third Rock was, for me, far superior. To summarise, four aliens land on Earth as part of a mission and have to blend in, with hilarious consequences. And they are frequently are hilarious, as everything goes wrong and chaos ensues.

John Lithgow got the producers’ attention for this show after he was the guest host of Saturday Night Live, throwing himself into sketches with great aplomb. Before this, he was not thought of as a comedic actor. But not only can he do comedy, he excels at it. His character, Dick, steals every scene he is in with a combination of innocence, eccentricity, and intensity.

He is supported by French Stewart, Kirsten Johnson, and an initially very young Joseph Gordon Levitt. Plus William Shatner regularly cameos as their boss, the Big Giant Head. But Lithgow is my favourite thing about the show.

5. This Country

This is the probably the comedy series I have enjoyed the most in recent years. Each series gets stronger. The Office influence is clear, but I much prefer its rural offspring.

Kerry and Kurtain are just kind of stuck, unable to escape the town they grew up in and will likely grow old there too. They blend wonderfully with Paul Chahidi’s vicar, who is just a permanently nice man and willingly tolerates their nonsense. The rest of the supporting cast is also great. Any scenes with Big Mandy are always excellent.

I grew up fairly close by in Stroud and went to school in Tetbury, so I can confirm the characters are scarily accurate. What gives the show another dimension for me is that the building used as the vicar’s office is where I went to parish council meetings every month from 2008 to 2009. This is because I had to cover them when I was working as a reporter for the local paper, rather than for any sort of personal enjoyment. Daisy and Charlie Cooper may well have read my often mundane articles, as it was also their local paper based in their home town of Cirencester.

6. Peep Show Series 1-3

Okay, this is an obvious one. But nothing makes me laugh quite Peep Show, series one to three specifically. From series four onwards, the quality fluctuates and, for me, it never recaptures the magic of the earlier series.

And those first three series are still magic on repeat viewings. I have fond memories of watching it with my uni housemates, which might be why I favour the first three series so heavily. The show is instantly quotable and makes you laugh at mundane things, like brown and white bread, or Crunchy Nut (‘Pretty expensive, as I recall.’).

The desperation of Mark and Jeremy is what makes it so funny. You half-root for them to succeed, but also want them to fail as their reactions will be even funnier. Then Super Hans appears and things instantly get weirder and more hilarious.  

The show makes you feel deeply uncomfortable, but in that pocket of awkwardness is where the show has its biggest laughs. Series two probably just about edges it as my favourite, with the university episode, racist Daryl, and making the music track for Gog some of the highlights.

Mark and Jeremy both feel they deserve much better, but are ultimately in their predicament because of their own inadequacies and stupid decisions. I can’t think why that feels eerily familiar.

• How to Win a Pub Quiz is at London’s Canal Cafe Theatre on October 4 (Tickets); the  Old Joint Stock Theatre in Birmingham on October 8 (Tickets) and The Antelope in Godalming on October 18 (Tickets).

Published: 24 Sep 2026