Based on the room of the same name in Orwell's 1984, Room 101 began in 1992 on Radio 4, before vaulting to TV two years later, whilst the radio series ceased.

Hosted on Radio 4 and BBC TWO by Nick Hancock, and from 1999 by Paul Merton, Room 101 has a simple premise.

Celebrity guests come on and consign to Room 101 anything they particularly loathe and despise, arguing with the host as to the merits of chucking Football, France or Novelty Underpants to oblivion.

At its best Room 101 is deliciously biting about institutions that we hate - and fantastic argument fodder when someone rubbishes something you love.

Although Nick Hancock was the more rigorous of the hosts, Paul Merton's relaxed, naturally funnier style has made the programme the national institution it is now.

His sparring with guests ranges from gentle infighting (such as that with Ian Hislop, who put Merton in the Room on condition that he went too), to adulation when chatting to Terry Venables.

The only guest with whom Merton has had a seeming problem was Will Self, whose unstoppable verbal assaults against such victims as airports and the innocent Training Shoe (and against Merton for defending them) were as near as Merton ever came to losing his cool.

Fifteen years after its humble beginnings, Room 101 remains a BBC TWO mainstay and one of Hat Trick's big guns, and will continue to be so until we get tired of hearing what very funny people dislike.

Whoever ends up in the room next, it's hard to envisage an episode more powerful than Stephen Fry's, whose masterly condemnation of the culture of bile by putting the Room itself into the Room has to be its defining moment.