One to watch: Room 101 - BBC One, 8.30pm

There must be some mild-mannered, easy-going celebrities who get the call to appear on Room 101 and then have to wrack their brains to come up with just one thing that they hate so much, they’d happily banish it to an Orwellian torture chamber.
By The Newsroom
Published 24th Jan 2014, 10:20 BST
Room 101: (L-R) Henning Wehn, Frank Skinner, Caroline Quentin, Michael Ball.Room 101: (L-R) Henning Wehn, Frank Skinner, Caroline Quentin, Michael Ball.
Room 101: (L-R) Henning Wehn, Frank Skinner, Caroline Quentin, Michael Ball.

But as Frank Skinner returns for a new series of the comedy show, he can be assured that at least one of his guests has given plenty of thought to the subject, and has a very long list just waiting to go.

That’s because the first episode features Richard Osman, who in 2012 teamed up with his Pointless co-host Alexander Armstrong to write a book entitled The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World.

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They didn’t have to try too hard to reach their target - in fact, it seems their main difficulty was limiting themselves to just 100.

Richard says: “At first we thought ‘Is that a lot?’ but then when you sit down and start to think of annoying things - and you can try this at home - you’ll get to 100 in minutes. There are a million annoying things, but that’s maybe a few too many for the book.”

That’s not the only way that writing the book proved to be the perfect preparation for working on Room 101.

After all, the show has undergone some format changes since the old days, when original host Nick Hancock and his successor Paul Merton used to spend half an hour talking to one celeb about their pet peeves.

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Since the revived show came back on to our screens in 2012 under Frank’s stewardship, each edition has featured three guests, who get to debate the subjects up for banishment among themselves.

This week, Osman will be going head-to-head with comedian Roisin Conaty and broadcaster Joan Bakewell.

Luckily, Osman is used to defending his opinions.

He explains: “I’ve got a thing about ready salted crisps - they’re the best-selling crisps in Britain, but I can’t understand why because they’re boring, so I put that in [the book].

“It got lots of objections.”

And if Conaty and Bakewell gang up on him, he’s used to dealing with gender divides.

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“I was chatting to a few people about how I’d been walking past a cobblers and thought ‘Cobblers are a bit pointless, aren’t they? Who goes to a cobbler?’

Every guy in the room went ‘yeah’, and all the women went ‘What are you talking about? Cobblers are amazing, you go there to get your shoes fixed.’

“The men said ‘You don’t get your shoes fixed, you just get some new shoes.’”

So, will his fellow guests tell Osman he’s talking cobblers, or will he have come up with a whole new set of irritations, both minor and major?

Related topics:BBC One