Trigger Happy TV

This bizarre and very different comedy sketch show combines a hidden-camera style show with character sketch comedy and a hip-hop soundtrack.

This show first aired on Channel 4 and was created by the genius that is Dominic Joly and Sam Cadman

Basically the jist of the show is a collection of Dom dressed up in various disguises meeting and playing pranks on the general public.

Dom Joly says of the second series: "It was more enjoyable this time round," Dom says. "Largely because we knew what we were doing. We also had a lot more confidence. With the first series Sam and I never knew whether what made us laugh when we dreamed it up would make anyone else laugh. But it did." One possible problem with a second series is that the public might very well have recognised Dom. "This just didn't happen much," Dom says. "In London it was a slight difficulty but nowhere else. Even in London they would only do so afterwards, by which time it was too late anyway. A lot of people watch Trigger Happy but there are still millions out there who don't. We've also got a huge wig collection."

Highlights for the new series include more celebrity stitch-ups and several new characters. "We've got one bloke with very loud Walkman speakers. He's good. I like my useless Morris Dancer, trying to fleece tourists for cash. He just hits himself over the head with a tambourine and claims that it's a folk tradition. Then there's the punk. He looks like your real punk nightmare - piercings, tattoos, 'Fuck Off' written on the back of his coat. He approaches people and talks about art and sculpture. He's a cultured punk. My favourite, however, has to be the huge snail, me in a snail suit, taking ages to crawl across a zebra crossing."

Dom loves filming the show, but cheerfully admits that it has had a negative effect on his social life. "I'm a celebrity pariah," he says. "A celebrity leper. Pizza men just drive off when they see it's me, thinking that I'm up to something. No one will deliver furniture to me. When I go into a restaurant I can see them batonning down the hatches. I do love filming the show though, especially as I just bugger off and leave the researchers to explain what has happened to the people I've just been talking to."

This love of pranking, however, only goes one way. "I hate practical jokes," Dom admits. "I have no sense of humour whatsoever in that regard. If anyone was to do one on me I think I'd get violent. Or I'd just swear. My theory is that some enjoy them and some don't. The great Belgian flanneur, who has made it his mission to throw custard pies in the faces of well known politicians, says you can judge someone on how well they take it. I don't think I'd take it very well at all."

Luckily, Dom's usual 'victims' don't feel this way. "Making Trigger Happy has made me see how tolerant and good humoured the British are," he says. "People won't get involved and they respect anyone in uniform - even that of a park keeper from 1950 or a grown man dressed as a boy scout. The British police are more relaxed than their foreign counterparts as well. And they don't carry guns so I wasn't likely to get shot. In New York that was something I really did have to worry about. I was arrested in New York, Zermat and Bruges, but never once in Britain."