I love finding new comedy. It’s nearly as rewarding as discovering some brilliant band before everyone else. New laughs are a fine thing indeed. However, on the flipside of that, to find spanking snort, you have to wade through an incredible amount of dross… which brings me neatly to the terrible Comedy Shuffle (BBC Three, Thursday, 11pm).

There’s something about comedy showcases, especially on the box, that compels me to like ‘em. I get an internal voice whispering “Go on! Go on!”, and last night, watching Comedy Shuffle, my internal dialogue started yelling “Oh God. Oh sweet Jesus no. This can’t go on. Someone put me out of my misery”. However, being a TV reviewer, I had to stick to it to the end (as writing “…and so I turned it over half way through…” makes for very boring reading).

This week’s show was hosted by a Canadian chap who I saw on Graham Norton‘s show the other week… he was singing about The Dukes of Hazzard. A quick Google search informs me that he’s called Phil Nichol. Now, Mr Nichol isn’t my kind of comic. For a start he’s a musical comedian, which is something I’ve always struggled with. Why? Well, often, the joke relies on the fact it’s something prized into a rhyme, as opposed to something that would be funny in any format. This leaves people with Picasso shaped jokes… all disjointed and wrong. Before you start, I know Picasso was a talented bloke, but when was the last time he made you piss yer pants laughing? That all said and done, Nichol is an affable enough chap and I don’t wish him any ill.

The same cannot be said for Doktor Coca-Cola McDonald. Playing the Oh! Look at how weird and dark I am card. This means painting yer chops white, putting ‘weird’ make-up on, wearing only undercrackers and singing rubbish songs about oh so quirky things. Basically, this bloke is supposed to be edgy and outthere… but he’s at out there and edgy as your own very smooth snug-in-the-socket-of-your-skull eyeball.

The worst aspect of the whole show is that this is a vehicle to show us the future of comedy. If this is the future, then it looks to be one without laughs. Gone is the wit and sharp put-downs and in come the tired ‘rape’ jokes. You know the ones I mean. People who have watched Chris Morris and completely misconstrued the whole point. In fact, there was one section, a mock B-Movie trailer which saw someone giggling “It was more like a sexual assault”. Now I like the boundaries of taste being touched more than your average… but rape jokes are neither funny nor shocking. It reminds me of those sixth former types who say things like “Yeah… well (snigger) I raped yer nan’… (titter)”. It’s depressing and you can see ‘em coming a mile off. Hopefully, somewhere in all this dross, someone will come along and make me laugh a lung out… at least there’ll be hope.