Craig Brown

Columnist, critic and award-winning author Craig Brown is well known for his Private Eye parodies lampooning politicians and celebrities. He has written for numerous newspapers, both under his own name and as his alter egos Wallace Arnold and Bel Littlejohn. Collected here are Brown's four fantastic radio series, plus two bonus programmes in which he discusses his life and work.

Mixing satire, social observation and nonsense, This Is Craig Brown is a hilarious selection of work taken from his vast back catalogue of diaries, parodies and general silliness. A combination of monologues, dramatisations, verse and music, these five episodes see him examining The Arts, Celebrity, Travel, Communications and Hallucinations, aided by a stellar cast including Rory Bremner, Harry Enfield, Edward Fox and John Humphrys.

1966 Aand All That is Craig Brown's four-part satirical history of Britain, ranging from the 1920s and '30s to the 1980s and '90s. It sees him investigating how DH Lawrence of Arabia wrote Lady Chatterbox's Llama, exploring the era of 'Flour Power' and looking back on the age when Neil Knock-Knock and John Minor made the political headlines. Narrated by stars including Eleanor Bron, Joss Ackland, Ewan Bailey and Margaret Cabourn-Smith, it won a Sony Gold Award for Best Comedy in 2007.

In As Told To Craig Brown, the satirist offers up more inspired parody, mockery and pastiche, as he romps through anything that's newsworthy and a good many things that aren't. Narrated by Juliet Stevenson and Steve Wright, these six episodes feature a host of top comedians and impressionists including Ronni Ancona, Jon Culshaw, Lewis MacLeod and Sally Grace. In the crosshairs of satire are Tuscan holidays, CCTV, the Jane Austen industry and busty starlets.

Craig Brown's Lost Diaries finds Brown dipping into the private lives of public figures from the 1960s to the present day. Over the course of six episodes, he covers a whole year of satire, from the musings of great thinkers like Barack Obama and Barbara Cartland in January and February, to the journals of Germaine Greer and Nigella Lawson in November and December. Voicing these, and many other, celebrities are Jan Ravens, Alistair McGowan, Lewis McLeod, Ewan Bailey, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Dolly Wells.

And in Work In Progress and Desert Island Discs, we hear from Brown himself as he describes writing the Private Eye diary and his 'Way of the World' column for The Daily Telegraph, and shares the soundtrack of his life with Kirsty Young.

First released: Thursday 7th December 2023