Is this Harry Hill's final TV Burp?

According to The Sun, the new series of Harry Hill's TV Burp - starting on ITV1 on Saturday - will be his last. The 46-year-old comic has been making TV Burp since 2002 and has reportedly turned down a one-million pound pay rise. An ITV source said of TV Burp: "Harry kept telling people how much he hated doing it, but they thought he was joking. He wasn't." Harry, 46, said the Bafta-winning programme's punishing schedule had put his personal life under too much strain, and he now plans to focus on a new project with Simon Cowell — writing gags for X Factor The Musical. In June Harry joked that working on the show had left him 'suicidal', adding: "It is a drag. One year I did 21 shows — most series are only eight. At the end of it I was completely mental." An ITV spokesman insisted it had a 'great relationship' with Harry and said another series would be shown in 2012. But a spokesman at TV Burps' production firm Avalon said: "Harry has a lot of commitments in the next year, but a final decision has not yet been reached." SUBSCRIBE to TV Times magazine NOW and you could save up to 29%

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.