Eddie Mair

Nick Park on Shaun the Sheep's big screen debut

Radio Times readers voted Shaun the Sheep their children's TV favourite. Eddie Mair rounds up creator Nick Park and his flock to find out how Shaun became a big-screen star...

Hugh Bonneville on bringing blue-sky thinking to BBC

"I did have to giggle to myself when I found a producer hiding in a stairwell trying to do a deal with some contributor on the phone because it was the only place to get a bit of privacy. I think the idea of being able to go to your own thought-space in the BBC is probably a thing of the past."

Radio Times review

I arrive late to Nurse, Radio 4's series of short snappy comedies. It's in six parts and by the time I'd caught up with the good reviews, it was already halfway through.

Written by Paul Whitehouse and David Cummings, it features a community mental health nurse (Esther Coles, who contributes additional material). She sounds as patient, good-humoured and capable as you'd want a community mental health nurse to be. She visits a host of people in their own homes, almost all of them Paul Whitehouse.

In episode four (my episode one) there's a chat about the value of gardening, with Billy "finding God at the end of a spade". Ray has some brilliantly funny lines (I cannot repeat here the one involving the Isle of Man), but his bravado can't mask the hints at his troubled life. Herbert believes in the art of letter-writing. He's written to Kingsley Amis and won't countenance the suggestion that he's dead: "No... he's just having a break."

Tommy challenges Nurse: "You think I'm away with the fairies." And Lorrie, one of the few characters not played by Whitehouse, explains why she won't take her medication, even though her daughter has been taken away from her: "When I take my pills, me no hear Jesus."

Luckily the Radioplayer is our friend. Catch up with Nurse while you can.

Every day, in a stairwell at Broadcasting House, I pass by a photograph of Nicholas Parsons. If you haven't seen that photo, you've seen one like it. Down the years, Nicholas must have been photographed thousands of times with timepieces of all descriptions. He is invariably pointing at them, and beaming as if the clock in question is the most wonderful object ever conceived.

And well he might. Since the earliest days of Radio 4 in 1967, Nicholas has presided over Just a Minute with the same glee exhibited in every publicity shot. His cry of "Welcome to Just a Minute!" at the start of each programme is as enthusiastic a greeting as you'll hear on the radio... an enthusiasm that the passing decades have not dimmed.

His cheery and wily chairmanship are the backbone of it all, with the game's players giving the show new form every week. For a programme obsessed with the passing seconds, time has robbed it of some of its most accomplished participants. Paul Merton is now the mainstay, though he's not here for this first edition of a new series: here it's Gyles Brandreth who picks up and runs with his topics, full of clever word play, boisterous energy and mischief.

As always, anarchy is never far away. In round one, panellist Patrick Kielty accuses Parsons of behaving like a contestant and awards him a point. Never a wasted minute.

The Newsagent's Window's the engaging story of how John Osborne and a friend move into an unfurnished house, only to realise they need some furniture. Despite being the sort of people who prefer self-service tills at the supermarket in order to minimise human contact, they become enthusiastic users of the local newsagent's window to seek out bits and bobs for their new address - a place with a garden and "a pond that rippled with a chorus of frogs".

The script is peppered with beautiful flourishes and delivered by John with warmth. It stands out because it's done in front of a studio audience. It would have worked, I'm sure, as a dry read in the style of Book at Bedtime, but the programme is lifted by the audience's appreciation of the humour and pathos that run throughout.

John asks the man who sells them beds why he advertised in a newsagent's window rather than online. The man replies: "I hate online." And by the end of this charming half-hour, you too might be tempted to cut your internet connection and start squinting at the little cards in your local newsagent's window.

This three-part documentary series, narrated by journalist Eddie Mair, looks at the 'darker', money-making side of the comedy world.

The first episode looks at how many comics, in particular stand-ups, make money by performing at corporates. It shows performances from The Real Variety Show where comics play in front of business people keen on booking them for events.

Then it follows the world of adverts, discussing comics like Mark Arden and Stephen Frost (who did ads for Carling Black Label) to QI creator John Lloyd (who first met Alan Davies when Lloyd directed ads for Abbey National.) I know there's a history of comics doing adverts - despite the public outrage at Mark Watson a few years back - but I was suprised at the frequency of appearances. Most of the ads were produced 'before my time' as it were, so were quite shocking in a way. Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie advertising tobacco?

It's definitely a growing trend, though; if you're feeling bored, you can play a little game where you try to spot how many times in a three-minute period you can hear the voice of Hugh Dennis.

Off all the people on Funny Business, though, the most interesting was Rhod Gilbert. Rhod explained how one corporate gig resulted in him sacking them off altogether, and how he justified doing adverts for the Welsh tourist board because he was promoting a country rather than a product. There were also interesting contributions from Mark Thomas, who attacked just about any involvement of comedians and advertising. The only advertising I can think that he has been involved in was with early episodes of The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, which were sponsored by small independent shops - like a gentlemen's hairdressers and a record shop.

Funny Business declares that the problem with advertising is that there's no funny ads. I can't help but think the problem's that there are ads to start with.

Funny Business, narrated by Radio 4 newsman Eddie Mair, showed us what comedians were doing when they weren't monopolising television - to wit selling their souls at lucrative corporate dinners. Here was the menu - half an hour of Michael McIntyre for £40,000, Ricky Gervais for £25,000. Lesser lights got less, but how could you resist? You were right there in the shop window prostituting your art. One lavish event, the Real Variety Show, with its audience of hardnosed business types, could land you 30 other corporate gigs. Jo Brand and Arthur Smith bared their shame but took the money. Everyone had experience of being ignored on stage. Rhod Gilbert was visibly distressed as he relived the night he found himself talking to the back of Sir Alex Ferguson's head at a footballers' beano in Mayfair.

It was revealing but long-winded, and I found myself wondering how much Eddie Mair was getting paid as we drifted into the overvisited realm of vintage advertising with its (yawn) clips of Fry and Laurie selling cigars and John Cleese being zany in the service of Schweppes. "Wherever you look now, money's spoiled it," said Cleese from his Monte Carlo apartment.

Anyone who works in an office will have had the experience: an awards bash for people in your sector, a hotel ballroom, rubbery roast chicken - and up on stage a half-known name from the comedy circuit making ill-informed cracks about your business and looking as if he can't wait to collect his cheque.

It needn't be such torture; in fact, some comedians make an art form (and a packet) out of such well-lubricated corporate gigs, as this three-part series discovers. Among those recalling the pitfalls when comedy and commerce collide are John Cleese, Rhod Gilbert and Jo Brand, while RT's own Eddie Mair narrates.

In Funny Business (BBC2), the first of a series, Eddie Mair narrated an investigation into the ways in which standup comedians can make big money, none of which is by telling jokes in comedy clubs.

Appearing in adverts is one way, but many comics find selling stuff on TV to be inconsistent with either their morals or their sense of humour. Not that many, actually. Less objectionable is the corporate gig. You're just doing your act, albeit in front of a room full of company managers for an obscene amount of money. Ricky Gervais gets £25,000 for a 20-minute corporate set. Michael McIntyre gets £40,000. It's not surprising that up-and-coming comedians on corporate booker Jeremy Lee's roster fall over themselves to appear in his annual Real Variety Show, essentially a huge audition for an audience of events company managers. Again, it's just a gig, you end your set with the punchline: "I'm available for bookings, and I also host!"

A lot of comedians won't touch corporate gigs either, but not necessarily for the reason you might think. "I doubt there's one comedian in the world," said Arthur Smith, "who hasn't died on his or her arse at a corporate gig."

Jo Brand finds them bracing - "If you do corporates, you get the message that not everyone loves you," she says - but Rhod Gilbert still gets heart palpitations just driving by the venues of old corporate failures. It may be filthy lucre, but it doesn't sound like easy money.

Nicholas Parsons on the success of Just a Minute

Eddie Mair talks to the panel show host about 45 years of radio success, and the new TV version of the programme.