John Humphrys

Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, it is now possible to watch Radio 4 on the television. Not by tuning in to digital channel 704, where one can listen to the Today programme while watching a soulless blank screen, but by watching BBC4, where insufferable self-satisfied discussion programmes have taken on a new and horrific visual form. Your genial host: the bourgeois Frankenstein* Marcus Brigstocke, whose approach to off-the-cuff conversation is to count silently inside his strange elongated cylinder of a head until his guest has shut up, before stomping in with the leaden tread of an asphalt welder to deliver a series of scripted quips.

And when it comes to smug, middle-class chat shows, the half-arsed format is king. Here, they're never sure whether to point and mock (John Humphrys has never had coffee from Starbucks!!!!! Can you imagine!!!!) or to trawl the depths in search of slapstick (Clive Anderson, if you can credit it, has never once in his life practised judo!!!! How humorous). Perhaps, with a Brigstockean constipated sneer, it should be renamed Never Seen Room 101.

TV Bite, 25th March 2009

I've Never Seen Star Wars, hosted by Marcus Brigstocke, encourages celebrity guests to try completely new experiences.

This week's guest was John Humphrys from the Today programme. Unable to change the habit of a lifetime, Humphrys persistently talked over Brigstocke, disrupting his patter and obliterating several punch lines. Brigstocke, like a conscientious midwife, stayed with the script until all the gags were safely delivered, although some of the spontaneity was lost in the process.

Shows like I've Never Seen Star Wars are heavily dependent upon the comic input of their guests, and John Humphrys was not a particularly forthcoming one.

The original radio format is left almost intact, undisturbed by any visual innovation. Close your eyes and all you would have missed would have been a short moondancing lesson from Brigstocke and a cluttered set design heavily reminiscent of Room 101.

Harry Venning, The Stage, 23rd March 2009

A second run for the deadpan comedy that's like Feedback from a warped alternative universe. The show manages to mangle radio formats into unusual shapes before presenting them in an almost credible fashion, and as co-presenter Jon Holmes tells Radio Times, series two boasts: 'Today introducing controversial waterboarding torture techniques to grill politicians; a gritty HBO remake of Gardeners' Question Time in the style of The Wire; a fan convention for The Archers in Las Vegas; and Oliver Stone's new radio drama Peston." And tonight, after David Miliband's successful 'appearances' in series one, an equally peculiar Ed Balls sounds off, while John Humphrys is replaced by a real pit bull. Newsreader and voice of gravitas Alice Arnold once again has the task of announcing all this with a straight face.

David Brown, Radio Times, 18th November 2008