Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round

Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round is a comedy sketch show which ran on BBC2 for a total of 6 episodes over one series in May and June 1998.[1][2]

Alexei Sayle's final series was almost identical in format to The All New Alexei Sayle Show except with yet another change of writers. (This time they included Kevin Cecil, Dave Cummings, Kevin Gildea, Andy Riley and Edgar Wright). Unusually, there was no studio audience.

Sketches included the talents of Noel Fielding, Lee Hurst, Paul Putner, Gemma Rigg, Reece Shearsmith, Jessica Stevenson, David Walliams and Peter Serafinowicz

The continuing adventures of Bobby Chariot were chronicled. Now free from any obligation to be Alexei's warm-up man, he traversed a series of other career cul-de-sacs under the appalling management of the repulsive "Edna" (played by Denise Coffey). In one episode, the joke was turned on its head as Chariot performed for an audience of students, who enjoyed his act ironically and responded to his catchphrase "How ya diddling?" with an enthusiastic reply of "We're diddling fine!" (until he got overconfident and moved on to material which insulted his audience).

Meanwhile, Alexei Sayle himself was depicted as living in a Teletubbies-style burrow somewhere in the posh part of North London.

Probably the most famous sketch was "The Ayatollah Of Dibley", an Islamic Fundamentalist version of The Vicar of Dibley.