Dave only have eight shows that they screen. They own far more, as they very, very occasionally pop up. But take any six hour block on the channel, and you can guarantee that at least five hours will be back-to-back Top Gear, QI, Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You. They’re all good programmes in and of themselves, but they all have fundamental problems with them. But, in order, they: buy into a concept of enforced blokeiness that is inflated tenfold by being on a channel called ‘Dave’; exist as a not-quite-good-enough-for-Radio-4 parade of decontextualised trivia; make a sequence of cheap gags made at easy targets; and make a sequence of cheap gags made at easy targets. And bringing these two problems together means that Dave soon gets rather annoying. Mark Lamarr making jokes about how useless Geri Halliwell is. Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie doing the same skit on Whose Line Is It Anyway where Colin pretends to be Ryan’s arms. Alan Davies turning up his Mockney dial to 11 and acting like a grating little sod. Night. After. Bloody. Night. The ads for Dave were right in some ways. Everyone knows someone called Dave. But everyone also knows someone called Dave who is always around, who is always ‘there’. No matter what the occasion, no matter whether someone invited him, Dave will be wisecracking away in the corner. And deep down, everyone thinks that Dave is a bit of a wanker.