The Smell of Grease Paint, the Roar of the Crowd:Toast Of London S2.

A prostitutes and celebrities blow football tournament to raise money for homeless ponies, Josh Homme getting his nose chopped off, and Jeremy Paxman's matchstick statue of the Angel of the North getting smashed up.

It can only be the return of Matt Berry's Steven Toast. The second series of Toast of London (written by Arthur Matthews and Berry himself and directed by Michael Cumming) aired on Channel 4 back in November/December 2014 (before I even started blogging so I can't add a hyperlink in this time) and is now available on the BBC iPlayer.

It's worth going in. It's very funny - and very easy to watch. As ever Toast (Berry) manages to get in all manner of ludicrous scrapes while taking on all sorts of unsatisfying jobs. He auditions to play Charles Dickens, flies to the Democratic Republic of Congo to make an advert for cigarettes, he reveals the killer's identity in The Moose Trap, and he fails miserably when he takes on a job directing Calendar Girls. 

Whose cast he describes as a "bunch of middle aged tarts hiding their tits behind flowerpots". Along the way he manages to end up owing "the tax people" £250,000, joining the Freemasons, and gets himself buried alive. On the plus side he does get to have sex with his arch rival Ray Purchase's wife, Mrs Purchase (Tracy-Ann Oberman) in the middle of a soft furnishing shop.

Mrs Purchase, who claims she can suck the Thames dry, has gained a reputation as a prostitute but it's only her husband Ray (Harry Peacock) that ever actually has to pay her. To be honest, he's mostly too busy with his new friend Nick Swivney (Trevor Laird) and running a Beefeater themed anti-gay bus tour of London sights.

Elsewhere in Toastworld, his agent Jane (Doon Mackichan) has inherited Michael Winner's antique rifles and gone "back on the acid", the hipsters he works with, Danny Bear (Tim Downie) and Clem Fandango (Shazad Latif) wear what Toast considers to be "clown outfits", continue to make his life a misery, and his misogynistic older brother Colonel Blair Toast (Adrian Lukis) has turned up wearing a military outfit and one solitary yellow rubber glove.

Toast's flatmate Ed (Robert Bathurst) reveals his 'porn name' to be Posh Dong Minge Muncher, Norris Flipjack (the excellent Geoffrey McGivern) barbecues, or strictly speaking spit roasts, a fox, and the new lover and husband-to-be of his ex-wife, Ellen (Amanda Donohoe), Sterling Porrich communicates solely by using a ZX Spectrum.

Porrich and Flipjack, of course, are not the only daft names that crop up. Series two introduces us to such people as Duncan Clench, Colin Skittles, Max Gland, Betty Pimples, Wendy Nook, Parker Pipe, Basil Jet, Linda Praise, Ken Suggestion, Kate Fear, Axel Jacklin (played by Terry Mynott who also portrays Paxman), and Mr Cockatip.

There are even guest appearances from Peter Davison, John Nettles, Alan Ford as an angry homeopath, and Steve Pemberton as a surprisingly still alive Francis Bacon who sings like Scott Walker. Most surprisingly of all, Josh Homme plays himself. Nose or no nose.

There's still the running joke of Toast not being able to pronounce the names of people and places (for example:- Ben Elton, Larry Grayson, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Abingdon) and I couldn't help notice how often Toast dismisses people as wankers, fucknuts, pricks, losers, bellends, cocksuckers, and total cunts.

As with a running joke about Toast 'following through' in Oddbins, it never comes across as particularly crude but quite simply funny. Puerile, sure, but entirely in keeping with Toast's character. A fairly unlikable person you can't help liking. By the end of the second series even the theme tune, Berry's own Take My Hand, had grown on me.