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Enjoying the new Katherine Jakeways series on Radio 4 so far, but it feels like she really needs something commissioned for TV.
Glad to hear Mark Watson back. Affable and funny, although his show does seem to share a very similar theme with an awful lot of Radio 4 shows of late.
Quote: jsg @ 5th March 2020, 10:57 AMEnjoying the new Katherine Jakeways series on Radio 4 so far, but it feels like she really needs something commissioned for TV.
Katherine is a terrific writer. Good actress too. I don't think this is up to the standard of the wonderful North by Northamptonshire but still very entertaining. She takes the minutiae of everyday life and bends it. It works a treat on radio, I'm not sure how it would transfer to the screen. LIke to see her try, though.
Really enjoying will smith presents the tao of bergerac on 4 extra
Quote: italophile @ 14th March 2020, 5:53 PMKatherine is a terrific writer. Good actress too. I don't think this is up to the standard of the wonderful North by Northamptonshire but still very entertaining. She takes the minutiae of everyday life and bends it. It works a treat on radio, I'm not sure how it would transfer to the screen. LIke to see her try, though.
There's different challenges with both, of course, but I think it would work very well given the chance. The luxury of TV is the time you get to bed things in, which I could see doing her work justice.
And yes, North By Northamptonshire is still her career best.
Listened to a bit of Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme and lost it at the line about "the Steptoe brothers".
Back here once again. I still see this section as the heart of BCG even if I spend most of my time wittering on the West Wittering that is the general forum. We did have to have plastic bags on our feet on the caravan site there. A sense of loyalty and commitment enables my return and aren't you so glad! It isn't as if I am anything but fully v-necked clothed.
Also, in view of this specific thread, a reminder that I was always a radio man more than a TV man and while radio faded for many years, I support it as the underdog. It and me. Now, there are various strands. Personally, and I have said this before, I think radio comedy went upwards. I can't be specific about when the turnaround came but I feel the last decade was better than the previous two. Actually, the change may have been around 2005 but I'm not sure. The 90s were dire.
Anyhow, I'm a staunch supporter of the BBC and the TV licence but the BBC is now severely stretching me. It is too right on now in my opinion so that it has long left my working class London home of the cockle and the winkle. We didn't ask for anything. Nothing. All we wanted was to be taught a better way and feel we might one day be on the same level while simultaneously forever doffing our cap. The bloody liberals buggered that one up, They didn't only invade our bedrooms.
Anyhow, frankly, I don't want programmes that are produced purely because of people's race or sexuality, neither of which interest me when people are far more interesting as people. Hey, I am a homosexual black. Yes, great. What football team do you support, can you knit, which is your favourite county and why, and how good are you really at Sudoku? In other words, don't be such a f**king bore. And then there is the constant news onslaught. The best thing about the news is when the news reader has such a calming voice that the sound of the voice reduces everything that is said to nothing.
R4 still tries its best on that score but frankly the shite which any voice has to deliver now knocks that voice out. It is no longer, sadly, the Grandad who died 23 years before me or a woman who in a librarian sort of way is an ethereal angel. Meanwhile, the alternative for God sake is Ms Zoe Ball who I wouldn't want to get within aggro distance during a shirts versus skins version of celebrity rounders, even with our breasts out. Still, I think you would find that my armpits are more obviously male. I do realise that Joe Bloggs was essentially a 1980s fashion thing but I did find that it also did the trick in a way that none of your Africas do now. Not that we were so corner shop in those days and youth is always more oniony.
So where was I? Where am I? I hear on the grapevine that BBC4 TV might be going which just goes to show that all of the sodding executives should be thrown into a Los Angeles hip-hop film. Yet another which is successful at the Oscars like most tripe is these days. If that ends, what is the future of R4 Extra? Because it is the only remaining part of Britain now as Britain is defined by John Snagge, Alvar Liddell, punk rock and, going forward, all of our futures placed through the prism of the Spitfire, PG Tips, DM boots and robotic General Practitioners delivering blood tests via das Amazon drone.
The fact that it is news free is something that nobody mentions and that silence scares me. Of course, its main importance is that it gives an erection to the funny bone. But get rid of it and we will lose our connections with the reassuring voices that we will indeed need to win the next anti-fascist war. It has been lost in R4 actual already. Its people increasingly sound reedy like between 1am and 5am the bit of sleep they do get has been interrupted by a gangbang. That is, on the other side of the B and B which, if bisexual, they felt obliged to join in. Pontificating (1930s) and poncy (2010s) it is so sad there has always been a radio pon, however much those of us who are the last bastions, even in these Covid times, try to endorse them. And if they ditch R4E, I can tell you straight, I ain't then going to Up All Night, adewotsit or not.
Enjoyed what I've heard of You'll Do so far. It has a very good atmosphere which is always compatible with the guests, and a format that's equally capable of going through more important stuff as well as the trivial.
As for the less current I listened to the first series of Mark Watson Makes The World Substantially Better and was surprised by how good it was. It was better than his more recent radio show, which I also really liked. The other thing that struck me about it was how cartoonish his affected Welsh accent was at one point in time. If anything this added to the enjoyment for me, especially the parts in the routines where he'd do an impression of someone else's voice. Listeners at the time must have just thought he could do a really convincing English accent.
HHH "The Scandal Magazine" on R4+
I'd forgotten how funny this was - absolutely brilliant from all concerned! Kenneth William's lascivious judge was hysterical. 
I listened to The Last bus home the other day
One of the very best
"Now I know where I stand!"
Currently enjoying What's Funny about......
Jon Plowman and Peter Fincham Discussing various Sitcoms with their actors/writers etc.
Blackadder one was very good And is still on BBC Sounds (which is still a shit app)
The Thick of It was good as well but seems to have dropped off.
Others on there as well are worth a listen.
Currently enjoying What's Funny about......
Jon Plowman and Peter Fincham Discussing various Sitcoms with their actors/writers etc.
Blackadder one was very good And is still on BBC Sounds (which is still a shit app)
The Thick of It was good as well but seems to have dropped off.
Others on there as well are worth a listen.
Listened to the original and best ISIHAC the other day on R4+, coming from Nottingham, and Humph did his usual brief description of where they were broadcasting from......................not verbatim
"So you find us this week in Snottingham, the home of the Snotts, but apparently the Norman conquerors couldn't pronounce the letter 'S', so it was decreed that from then on it would be called Nottingham, the home of the Notts.
And it's easy to see why this ruling was resisted so strongly by the people of Sc**thorpe"