Ken Bruce

Rob Brydon asks fans to 'respect his privacy' after his BBC pal quits

Rob Brydon has asked his followers to "respect his privacy" as he was "devastated" by the news that broadcasting veteran Ken Bruce is leaving BBC Radio 2 in March.

Scotland's funniest 60 people

As the Glasgow International Comedy Festival prepares to launch with a gaggle of giggles later this month, we count down Scotland's funniest 60 people.

Radio Times review

At the beginning of this episode I started to think I might have had enough of comedians trading impressions in Italian beauty spots. By the end, I was completely converted again. The series always hovers on the edge of nothingy, self-indulgent banter, but it always saves itself and delivers terrific belly laughs alongside unexpected little shots of melancholy.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are at Pompeii, wearing appalling shorts (Coogan's are those baggy, halfway-between-knee and-ankle ones) and reflecting on the disaster there. By the remains of one victim, in a display case, Rob does his "small man in a box" voice and it feels crass; but then it shades into a lovely illustration of how he struggles to take anything seriously - he's a prisoner of his own comic riffs.

That undertow of sadness only adds to the comedy, which this week covers Humphrey Bogart, Frankie Howerd and, briefly, Ken Bruce.

Ken Bruce is the overlord of Radio 2 and he's been running a tight ship. So, when young comedians Diane Morgan and Joe Wilkinson asked his permission to broadcast their sketch series he laid down some strict conditions. Hear the wrath of Bruce here as the duo fail to provide him with the introductory theme tune he's demanded. Around this frankly strange set-up, comes a string of equally surreal sketches, the best of which involves two spiders discussing what it's like to be caught under a glass.

Comic Rob Brydon fools DJ Ken's Radio 2 fans

Listeners were left baffled by the erratic behaviour of Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce today - until it emerged the show was being hosted by comedian Rob Brydon.

Audio: Rob Brydon impersonates Radio 2's Ken Bruce

Regular listeners to Ken Bruce's Radio 2 show on Friday morning might have noticed that the presenter's smooth Scottish tones were perhaps a little 'lighter' than usual.

Sheila Hancock is the narrator in Katherine Jakeways' new four part comedy drama serial. It's set on Wadenbrook, an hour from Peterborough by bus, but where the local co-op is the centre of local life, partly because Rod the manager, comes on the tannoy to tell customers more than they might want to know about his private life. Imagine a version of Llareggub in Northants, with Ken Bruce on the radio and a talent contest in sight.

In these hi-tech modern times you now, of course, have the added opportunity of catching up with radio programmes you have missed or want to listen to again via the stations' websites. With so much on offer, Listen Against's Alice Arnold and Jon Holmes decided the copious amounts of material could do with a bit of drastic editing - in other words, they hoped to present all the right snippets but not necessarily in the right order.

Thanks to some clever editing, there were some funny news items from the previous week's radio, not least the contestant taking part in Ken Bruce's Radio 2 Popmaster quiz, who had an interminable list of people he wanted to say hello to and the light entertainment meltdown when a laptop containing the subjects for the next 10,000 episodes of Just A Minute was lost.