British television personality Mark Lamarr will be hosting a series of online chats with various big name celebrities. He will be asking them a mix of questions, some his own, but most will be sent in by Internet users.

Mark Lamarr is not very impressed with the current state of the chat show. "Televsion," he explains, "goes along these lines of, oh if someone's doing it, let's all do it. There were so many years of `the chat show's dead', and then someone - I can't remember, perhaps Johnny Vaughan - did a chat show and it didn't work, so everyone else said: `Right, let's do a chat show that doesn't work'. I mean, Parkinson's back, and he's f...... useless."

So what, other than hurling abuse at British national treasures, is he doing about it? Well, he's got a chat show with a difference - it's on the Internet. Actually it's on America Online, but the effect is the same. From next month, Mr Lamarr will be hosting a series of big name online chats with various celebrities. He will be asking them a mix of questions, some his own, but most sent in by Internet users.

It's a repeat of the formula that AOL uses in the US, where the host is Oprah Winfrey, and, according to Mr Tom Laidlaw who runs AOL's UK Entertainment "channel", a big-name interviewee can pull in an audience of 60,000-80,000.

Traditionally, online chats have been rather tame affairs, even by the standards of TV chat shows, as celebrities pick and chose exactly which questions they answer. As you can't see or hear them, there is no way for the users to know what's happening. So, "What about the rumours about you and young boys/girls?" is easily ignored , while "When are you next coming to Toronto?" or "How come you're so great?" is dealt with in dreary detail. The user is none the wiser.

This provides a good reason for celebrities to choose to go online rather than give interviews through traditional media. George Michael famously went online after his spot of bother in a LA toilet, and even the reclusive Michael Jackson has been willing to answer his fans' questions over the Net.

Stars say: "It's a great way to communicate directly with my fans", when what they mean is "it's a great way to avoid dealing with annoying journalists".

The PR executive who sits in on our interview explains how AOL use this to their advantage in setting up big-name guests for Mr Lamarr. "I think we offer protection," she says. "I got a letter today from Prince Charles' press secretary. He's a really good example of someone who wants to be positioned with AOL; he likes the Internet, it's good for his image, but he would need the protection that we offer and that's why he thinks it's a fantastic idea."

Depressingly, she is absolutely right. The Net, which has been used by outlawed radio stations, newspapers and pressure groups around the world to bypass oppressive governments and censorship laws, also has the ability to become Hello! without the pictures.

You have to hope that the addition of Mr Lamarr into this mix can only be a good thing. It should be. You can imagine he will make a considerably more ballsy host than most of those who currently do the job.

Besides reflecting the unrelenting rise of online celebrity chat, this latest addition to cyberspace is an interesting example of how television and the Net are increasingly mimicking each other. But despite endless ill-informed talk about "convergence", what you see on your PC and what you get on your telly are very different.

Television loves to try to steal off the Net - with distinctly mixed results. Almost all channels make a feature of having a presenter read out e-mails from viewers. It's a nice idea, and was used particularly well by Sky and the BBC to encourage international feedback on the Kosovo bombings (not to mention that it's cheaper than having a bank of people answering phone calls). But in truth, this has a fraction of the vitality of your average online discussion.

Interactive television, supposedly the next big thing, is also pinching the Net's clothing. That said, many of the features are already there online, and considerably better. You want news video on demand? Try CNN or ITN's websites. You want to buy a book or a video at the press of a button? Go to Amazon.com. Send you emails via the TV? It's possible, but so is using your computer as a telephone, and how may people do that?

Meanwhile, people have repeatedly tried to turn the next into television with often humiliating results. Three years ago, Microsoft introduced the idea of channels to the Microsoft Network with "shows" that were made by independent producers and "broadcast" in a schedule. For any number of reasons (primarily because they were expensive, not very good and watched by only a handful of people) they were scrapped.

And it's no accident that the stuff that surrounds the new AOL show - the big-name signing, the PR company - is all identical to the start of a new TV show. While the content of the two media is still very different, they are both fragmented and in need of sledgehammer celebrity tactics to grab audiences' attention, and Mr Lamarr's hiring by AOL is a classic example.

AOL's problem is that they charge people for accessing the Internet, while the big growth area in Britain [yet to take hold in the Republic] is the likes of Freeserve and Virgin, who allow their users to get online for free. This is why Freeserve has built up almost one million subscribers in six months while AOL has around 600,000 after several years.

For AOL, the challenge isn't just trying to convince new people to stump up the cash, but also to convince existing customers not to cancel their standing orders and to get as many people online as often as possible. More users, more of the time, means more revenue from advertisers. These are precisely the same problem that BSkyB and countless small cable channels face.

So, AOL calls in Mark Lamarr (only AOL subscribers will be able to take part in his chat show), like BSkyB signing up Barry Norman. How far will this go? Well, AOL's Mr Tom Laidlaw says there are no plans for more celebrity hiring, but the company does have pretty deep pockets.

On the Net-obsessed US stock market, AOL was valued last week at around £69 billion (#104 million). That's about the same as Reuters, Pearson, BSKyB, Reed, Carlton, Daily Mail and General Trust, EMI and Emap - all added together, with enough change left for a slap-up meal and the Mirror Group. In other words, Mr Lamarr's fee is hardly going to break the bank.

However, if the Lamarr show works, you know it will be copied by other sites and online services. Another big name host here, a rash of celebrity chats there. You can also be sure that they will be out in the market happily waving chequebooks around at all vaguely available talent.

Anodyne interviews? Copying ideas? Poaching celebrities? Now that, as Mark Lamarr will tell you, is really like television.