Nigella Lawson

How satire website The Daily Mash became a sensation

"UKIP MP strangely familiar". "Anything bends if you f**k about with it enough, says Apple." "Non-smokers have no way to signal that sex is over." Those are just a typical day's headlines from The Daily Mash, the British satirical website that has become a surprise dotcom money-spinner - even if Nigella Lawson failed to see the joke.

Adam Sherwin, The Independent, 10th October 2014

While we're grateful for anyone trying to make us laugh right now, Hudd and Quantick's Global Village never quite hit the spot. Sketches ranged from the surreal - a complaint from one of Nigella Lawson's breasts that "we never even get a mention, it's always her bloody food!" - to what the show referred to as "deliciously daft" vignettes inspired by everyday life. Someone of these had potential, like the man complaining that the drawing from his adopted African child is substandard. "I pay £14 a month and what do I get? A crap lion." But the radio sudoku sketch - a running gag about how fantastically dull such an idea would be - was just fantastically dull.

Now, I know there's no greater irritant than people whining that comedy is "just not funny". A GSOH is overwhelmingly a subjective thing and Roy Hudd has had 50 distinguished years on radio. But the same policy statement did suggest Radio 2 take more creative risks and with a series of comedy masterclasses starting next week, let's hope that's where it starts.

Jane Thynne, The Independent, 13th January 2011

HQ (Saturday, Radio 2) brought the great Roy Hudd back to Radio 2 in a sketch show written by many hands among them those of his co-performer David Quantick. Quantick is a brilliant comic writer. As a performer, he has a way to go. Still, he warmed up nicely as the show went on and in the utterly unvulgar sketch where each of them played one of Nigella Lawson's breasts, overcame his awe of Hudd enough to stop reading his lines and let them bounce.

Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph, 10th January 2011