AWARD-winning comedian Lee Mack is back on our TV screens on Sunday with the series that has made the comedy sketch cool.

Mack, the former Blackburn schoolboy whose parents were the licensees at the Centurion pub on the Roman Road estate, is part of the team responsible for The Sketch Show, which won ITV its first BAFTA award for comedy in over 10 years.

Mack is quick to point out what makes The Sketch Show a success.

''It's a throwback, but in a good way,'' he said. "Some people have said that it is traditional, as though that were a bad thing. But I think quite the opposite is true.

"There is this widespread idea within comedy that 1981 is year zero, and that everything since then is brilliant and everything before then is rubbish. But that's not the case at all. Too often in the era of alternative comedy, they concentrated on ideas rather than actually being funny. But if you look back at the 1970s, there was some brilliant stuff -- like Morecambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies. Those shows weren't trying to say anything -- they were just purely funny. We're trying to get back to that idea of being purely funny. The day an audience member comes up to me after the show and says 'that really made me think' is the day I give up comedy!''

Joining Mack on the show are Jim Tavare, Karen Taylor, Tim Vine and Kitty Flanagan (who replaces Ronni Ancona).

Taylor, who recently had a starring role opposite Steve Coogan in BBC2's Paul and Pauline Calf's Cheese and Ham Sandwich, echoes the point: "The show is not afraid to be mainstream. It has a very broad appeal -- it can be enjoyed just as much by children as by grannies.

"It's not offensive or tasteless. We didn't want to replicate The Fast Show with all its catchphrases -- that's already been done. We just wanted it to be funny within a traditional format -- without turning into Jim Davidson!''

Mack, who is working on his own sitcom at the moment, agrees.

"I'm suspicious of comedians who try to appear cool,'' he says. "If I ever see a photo of a comedian smoking and trying to look rock'n'roll, I run a mile. One of the reasons we immediately got on with Kitty was that the first thing she said was not 'I want to get glamm-ed up', but 'I want to put on a gorilla suit.' She had no interest in looking cool -- only in being ridiculous.

"Trendy things soon go out of fashion. Some of the shows that were as hip as The Office is now, four years ago, have already been forgotten. I'm not saying that we've made an all-time classic like Fawlty Towers, but I think people will still be watching The Sketch Show in 10 years' time. Its appeal is timeless. There will always be a place for good jokes and good sketches.''

The Sketch Show, ITV1, Sunday 10pm