Nick Newman

Watch The News at Bedtime

The News At Bedtime is a Radio 4 news programme with a fairytale twist written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman and presented by John Tweedledum and Jim Tweedledee (Jack Dee and Peter Capaldi).

Dawn French was let down by dated material in Mastering The Universe, by Christopher Douglas and Nick Newman, a retread of domestic sex wars which might have found a home with Terry and June.

Joy Klamp is a writer, broadcaster and prominent academic. Her latest venture was born at an unsuccessful dinner party. "I was clattering some pans in the kitchen," she recalls, "when someone said to me, 'You know, Joy, you've really got this passive aggression thing down to a fine art. You ought to share your knowledge with the world.' I didn't say anything because I'd been moodily silent all evening. But it did set me thinking that everyone deserves to experience the fulfilling empowerment of sulking and mooching and staring into the middle distance. Spoiling someone else's fun can be the most satisfying of all the controlling arts."

The result is Mastering the Universe, a six-part course in advanced "nonjoyment techniques".

This is funny. Sadly, its star Dawn French is the worst thing about it. While everyone else is letting their acting play second fiddle to the words - by Nick Newman, of Private Eye, and the great Christopher Douglas, who gave the world the failed cricketer Dave Podmore, and the even better Ed Reardon's Week, the failed writer - French presents her character as though she were Dawn French without the large bosom jokes. As that character shows promise - her job is teaching people how to be miserable - it is to be hoped that French gets the hang of this radio comedy lark soon.

Gobble, Ian Hislop and Nick Newman's overblown comedy about a food scare, was intended for Christmas but postponed as people were actually dying at the time as a result of E coli. It is a difficult play to place. Today, for instance, the entertainingly named Hogg is defending his handling of mad cow disease in the Commons. At any old time, Gobble seems to be in encouragingly poor taste.