Aisling Bea to Host Have I Got News For You

Aislng Bea, Jayde Adams, Alice Lowe To Star In Take That Movie

Aisling Bea guest presents the last in the current 61st series of Have I Got News For You, on Friday 4th June, at 9pm - it will be Bea's first appearance on the programme. 

Joining the actor and comedian as the two guest panellists will be fellow comedian and actor Roisin Conaty and BBC newsreader and the recently announced new host of 'Mastermind', Clive Myrie, who join team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. 

As with the previous eps 7 & 8, this episode will also be recorded in front of a live, socially distanced audience. In line with government guidelines, the audience will be socially distanced, grouped in households and wearing masks. There will be a second audience (up to 64 people) watching the record from a separate cinema screening room at the studio.

Bea's comedy This Way Up is due to return for a second series this year.

Roisin Conaty is best known as the star and creator of the hit Channel 4 sitcom GameFace, which sadly, has not been recommissioned. On Angela Scanlon's Thanks A Million podcast she talked about sobriety and meditation: "I always feel like I have a brain that's all over the place. It's got a lot of channels and they're always on. My brain is like going into a sports bar where there's 55,000 channels and people just screaming for chicken wings... I'm sober and I'm so grateful for my sobriety. I'm so grateful for my sobriety and my meditation helps with that."

Conaty also talked to Scanlon about making GameFace: "We made the pilot in 2014 and it didn't get picked up. And I was really devastated. I just felt like, I was building to this moment. I felt like the pilot was good and then just nothing. I was at sea, cause you're the person then who's made a pilot that didn't get picked up. And that feels like it's endless... Just at that moment... it's the commissioner. You're not in control of it. In that time, when I thought it wasn't going to get picked up, I wrote another script. And that got picked up. I wrote another script and that's also with someone.

And then GameFace got picked up two years later but, in that time, my writing improved so much because I was writing other things. What I learnt about TV and how to make TV, just those two years... I felt quite like 'Why have I had to wait two years? We've killed the show.' What I learned, and even now, I wasn't a one-show writer and that, by writing other stuff, it showed me where I needed to change. That was a huge one for me. I was able to re-examine the show as a whole... It was only, I would say, going into the second series of GameFace, I was able to really appreciate those two years... I'm glad because the second series is so different to write to a first."

Aisling Bea is also one of the guests on The Jonathan Ross Show this Saturday, May 22, at 9.35pm on BBC One.

Have I Got News For You, Friday 4th June, BBC One, 9pm.

Picture of Aisling Bea: Joseph Sinclair

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