It's news. But not as we know it
Presented with deadpan dryness, the programme parodies everything from the idiocy of sports presenters to the sheer ridiculous jargon from the world of finance. The entire series is full of the surreal cobblers that we Brits come to love and cherish in our comedy.

I recognise that sports presenter
This show gave us our first televisual introduction to one Alan Partridge, who was the in-house sports journalist. Although Steve Coogan's monstrous creation is now legendary in his own right, he kind of fits in with all this nonsense as he blunders from story to story. One highlight is his interview with a winning jockey, a man so small he mistakes him for a 12 year old.

From the sublime to the ridiculous
Like Monty Python, this show embraces surreal stupidity like a relaxed monkey embraces a treasure chest full of free bananas. The various reporters boast wonderful names like Collately Sisters on the finance desk and the woefully inept Peter O'Hanarahanrahan. There's even a gay news desk, where we are informed by reporter Colin Popshed that both the Caspian and the Mediterranean seas are in fact gay. Also, look out for the story of a crashing helicopter narrowly avoiding a woman up a stick in a nearby field.

Fact me till I fart
You don't get many news anchors saying this, but then again you don't get many comedians like Chris Morris, who, along with Coogan, has been hailed as one of the most original, inspired geniuses in the world of comedy. Adopting a smug, Jeremy Paxman-style persona, Morris holds the show together, abusing and patronising everyone who gets in his way. Morris has since courted controversy with his more recent Brass Eye series, in particular one episode focusing on paedophilia. Those up in arms kind of missed the point, as it was sending up the sensationalist attitude of the British press, not the issue itself, but it certainly shows the kind of insane bravery of a comedian willing to push the boundaries a little to devastating effect.

Speak your brains
Not afraid to take the mickey out of the general public, this weekly feature involves Morris interviewing unsuspecting plebs and getting them to say stupid things without them knowing it. These have included one hapless chap having to determine exactly which letter in the alphabet constitutes the Letter of the Law (it's J apparently) and another features a bloke being made to demonstrate how tight the clamp down on crime should be, using an elastic band. There is even one instance where Labour MP Paul Boateng is asked to talk about the detrimental impact on kids of the blatantly made-up rapper called Herman the Tosser. He still manages to come up with something.

Familiar faces
The series is by no means a two-man show. It features a full-time cast of six, all of whom continued to pop up in subsequent comedy shows that have become popular in their own right. Doon Mackichan went on to be one third of Smack the Pony, while David Schneider went on to present Friday Night Armistice with the producer of The Day Today, Armando Iannucci. Patrick Marber has since written a couple of award-winning plays and Rebecca Front appeared as a regular in Big Train, and all of them can be seen popping up in both series of I'm Alan Partridge.