Jeremy Hardy

I wasn't planning to review this show but things changed for reasons you will soon discover.

The long running satirical panel game, currently hosted by Sandi Toksvig, has been running since 1977, and last week saw the start of its 74th series. This week's guests included regular performers Jeremy Hardy and Susan Calman, semi-regular Will Smith, and journalist Matthew Parris.

There were some topics that you would expect to be covered, such as the royal wedding, super injunctions and Libya, but then it came to the subject of tuition fees, and how most universities are raising them to extortionate rates.

Among those are my old university, Teesside University in Middlesbrough, which this week announced it was planning to put up its fees of £8,500. As you would expect, they took the mickey out of the region. Parris said that what was actually going on was that they were actually selling the whole university for £8,500.

Smith said that £8,500 tuition fees were a status thing, but argued that if this was the reason that they should just change the name to "Oxbridge University of the North" or "Hogwarts".

It cost the university £20,000 to change its logo and the name of the establishment to "Teesside University" from "University of Teesside", so £8,500 is nothing, really. Toksvig at the end claimed that if anyone was offended, the £8,500 includes, "a whole row of terrace houses."

To be honest with you, I was shocked when I heard them talking about Teesside in such a fashion, because I am amazed that anyone on BBC Radio 4 has even heard of Teesside.

I didn't mind The News Quiz mocking my old university, though. I'm just glad it got the publicity, even if it was not the most glowing publicity. To be honest, when I heard that the fees were going up, I was on Twitter arguing the raise was impossible; because no-one in Teesside has £8,500. (It's true - I'm currently writing this on a Windows 98 in a skip near a Starbucks, leeching onto the Wi-Fi).

The News Quiz show is still entertaining after so many years, and because it is on at 6.30pm, it mocks the news two-and-a-half hours before Have I Got News for You does. Well worth a listen.

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You never know, it might get witty this time. The venerable topical comment panel show returns for another season. Sandi Toksvig chairs, Jeremy Hardy, Sue Perkins and brilliant Andy Hamilton are among the guests. But is the nation in the mood for comedians taking pot shots? I doubt it. These are hard times and likely to get harder. That's why the gloriously spiky surrealism of Jon Holmes's Listen Against in this slot on Tuesdays is such a tonic. If News Quiz wants to be more than a habit it had better shape up. Radio 4's new Controller is listening.

Comedian Ava Vidal looks at how devolution has changed the way we laugh at our politicians. Now that power has moved from Westminster to Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, she explores whether comedy has followed it and whether politicians are viewed in any way differently in each place. And as Westminster adapts to a new government, is the content of political comedy there due for a change too? Is there such a thing as national political satire anymore? Including contributions from political comedian Jeremy Hardy, producer Bill Dare and comedy club manager Tommy Sheppard.