Andy Zaltzman

Andy Zaltzman: Touring armchair revolutionary

Attention Buglers! Andy Zaltzman stops to talk to us before his return to Scotland.

Andy Zaltzman shares a few of his comedy heroes

The Day Today, Robert Newman and Aristophanes are among Zaltzman's comedy greats.

The Times blows away The Bugle

The Times is to cease publishing a satirical podcast that ruthlessly mocked the paper's owners over the phone hacking scandal. Andy Zaltzman, who stars in the weekly show with John Oliver, said he was informed on Tuesday that their efforts on The Bugle would not be supported by the paper next year.

Political Animal's Andy Zaltzman looks back on 2011

Riots, revolution and financial meltdown should be a gift for comics but Berlusconi is beyond satire.

Rory Bremner comes home to radio, hosting this new series which combines topical satire, sketches, stand-up routines, impressions and the kind of investigative parody he made his own on Channel 4 in the darkest days of Blairism. Some fellow satirists mock him for earnestness, self-righteousness. I think they might just be a bit jealous of his powers of observation and mimicry. He's assisted here by comedian and writer Andy Zaltzman and impressionist Kate O'Sullivan. The show is to be repeated in the dodgy 7.15pm Sunday slot, which rather challenges its title.

For those who prefer the gag-o-meter turned up to 11 on their election coverage, there's The Vote Now Show. Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis and the rest of the hardworking Now Show team are offering comedic biteback three nights a week for election season, with programmes being recorded just four hours before transmission to make sure they're bang up to date on the day's events.

On Monday, Andy Zaltzman subjected himself to a John Humphrys interview (Humphrys is delightfully game), while Jon Holmes' consideration of stirring theme tunes for party leaders provides the belly-laugh we all sorely need. Tuesday's instalment included John Finnemore's hilarious dos and dont's for campaign leaflets - horse illustrations are key, apparently.

The Christian O'Connell Solution - a show so forced and unfunny I used to stare, disbelieving, at the radio - has departed, replaced by Chris Addison's 7 Day Sunday. It's an hour of quips about the headlines or, as Addison put it: "God said, let there be a radio programme in which four idiots are facetious about the week's news."

It's really quite funny, and comprehensive in its sweep of topics. Venezuela's President Chavez was deemed "fantastically leftfield"; Italian television was described as being mostly "prank-based"; and postmen and women, we were informed, "excrete red rubber bands" when nervous. You sort of have to be there, listening intently, to get the four-way chat (with regulars Andy Zaltzman and Sarah Millican plus a weekly guest). It's quite involved: if you lose yourself in the papers for a minute, you will miss hefty chunks.

Comedy Podcasts: A smile costs nothing

An article about comedy podcasts which includes interviews with Andrew Collins, Richard Herring, Robert Llewellyn and Andy Zaltzman.

The departure of the dismal, desperate The Christian O'Connell Solution (so good when he was running Fighting Talk; so bad when trying to raise a laugh about the week's news) on Radio 5 Live gave space to Chris Addison and 7 Day Sunday (11am). Things did not start well the first week, what with Kate Silverton, whose rather excellent news and politics-based programme precedes it, announcing it as The Christian O'Connell Solution, doubtless leading millions of potential listeners to switch off.

Then the programme came, and it seemed as though some genius had decided that the best way to better the Solution was to duplicate it. Addison and his primary guests, fellow comedians Sarah Millican and Andy Zaltzman, adopted a turgid pattern of one of them - usually Addison - talking and the others laughing. Always beware the comedy show in which the participants laugh; they're usually doing it so the listener doesn't have to.

But the diligent listener persevered - Addison is a funny man, Millican is a funny woman, and Zaltzman loves cricket, so one is predisposed to forgive him for being apparently unable to be funny on the hoof rather than off a prepared script. But episode two was just as dreary. The biggest laughs, in one quarter at least, came for the story about a hippo that floated out of a zoo during heavy rains. But there's no chemistry on display here, none of The News Quiz-esque scoring of laughter points, where clever people fall over each other in their desperation to be funnier than the last. I'd give it one more week and then find something else to do for an hour on Sunday morning. Go to church, maybe.

Chris Addison, columnist and comedian (from The Thick of It and Lab Rats, not to mention his frequent appearances all over this network), gets his own show, a review of the week's big stories. Fellow comedians Andy Zaltzman and Sarah Millican are regular guests, there's to be a special star each week too.