Joe Lycett returns to Channel 4 with The Lycett Arms

Coming straight from Joe's own pub, the show will air live on Friday nights.

Channel 4 has announced that Joe Lycett is currently applying for a licence to sell and serve alcohol because he’s setting up his own pub. And it’s a pub with a difference, because it will only be open for an hour a week.

During that hour, it will operate as the setting for Joe’s new live Channel 4 series The Lycett Arms, featuring top-drawer comedy entertainment from Joe and a pub full of celebrity guests.

For the show to go ahead, Joe will need to be fully accredited with a personal licence to serve alcohol and is currently completing the necessary forms and swotting up for the approved training course, after which he will take the mandatory exam to be accredited with a Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders.

Broadcasting live on Channel 4 later this year, Fridays at 10pm, The Lycett Arms will take place inside Joe Lycett’s own pub, which promises to be a technicolour, paisley-carpeted East London boozer where punters can escape the world while putting the world to rights.

The pub will be frequented by a cast of regulars, old friends and strangers, all welcomed with open (Lycett) arms by Joe and his weekly celebrity Pub manager.

Each week, The Lycett Arms will twin with a different pub from across the UK, celebrating what is special about Britain’s locals. Live, anarchic, and with the wheels threatening to come off at any moment, The Lycett Arms is a love letter to the great British pub.

Speaking ahead of The Lycett Arms, Joe Lycett said "I’ve always wanted to run a pub that only exists for an hour a week, for the purposes of a TV concept, and I’m thrilled beyond words to embark on the extended process of applying for a license to sell and serve alcohol."

"Filling in government-mandated paperwork has always been a passion of mine, and I only hope that at some point it involves the presentation of at least one form of photographic ID. Pretty much the only disappointment is that in addition to this enthralling form-filling process, I will also have to make a television series, as this is apparently the only way to make the whole tax dodge work."

"Nevertheless, I will meet my obligations to sit in front of a camera welcoming celebrities into the pub for great conversations and top comedy, it says here, and generally creating an unmissable event that will brighten your Friday evenings for six weeks. Those are all the words that I have been requested to say. Now I can return my attention to figuring out how to get round being locked out of Gov.uk."

To which Channel 4's Head of Live Events & Commissioning Editor, Entertainment & Reality, Tom Beck, added "Enticing Joe Lycett back onto Channel 4 screens has been a long and arduous process, involving months of delicate negotiations, emotional resilience and, in the end, the promise of legally binding admin."

"Thankfully, Joe’s appetite for bureaucracy remains undimmed, and we are delighted that he has agreed to spend Friday nights running a pub that is open for one hour a week, while also reluctantly making what we are legally obliged to describe as a brilliant new live entertainment series."

Made by Bango Studios and My Options Were Ltd, and will be executive produced by Joe Lycett, Iain Wimbush and Emily Hudd, with Tom Beck from Channel 4.

And executive producers Emily Hudd and Iain Wimbush from Bango Studios said "We’re delighted that we will be helping to facilitate one of Joe’s lifelong dreams; to set up and run his own pub (with extremely limited opening hours), and transmit it live on Channel 4. It's an absolute thrill to be working with Joe again on a show which promises to be an exhilarating slice of live entertainment joy - so long as all the paperwork comes through on time."

The Lycett Arms will air later this year on Channel 4