Richard Bacon

Richard Bacon: Why Blair reminded me of Pamela Anderson

The former bad boy of Blue Peter on why a sense of devilry has driven his career.

Audio Interview: Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse

Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse tell Richard Bacon that they are thinking of going on tour.

Prince Charles 'saw Richard Bacon laugh at funeral'

Richard Bacon has revealed that Prince Charles caught him laughing during the Queen Mother's funeral.

Very funny (and rather rude) pretend radio show, real extracts from actual broadcasts mashed up into fantasy fictional contexts (Jeremy Paxman running amok and being chased by the police, for example). Jenni Murray, Richard Bacon and John Humphrys appear as themselves but others (David Mitchell, Evan Davies, Steve Wright) are edited into parodies of themselves. Excellent cast, tight production, sharp scripts and a glorious capacity to make telling fun of radio's daily excesses. The Robert Peston competition is a wow. Alice Arnold presents, perfectly.

What clever little sausages that Jon Holmes and his cutting crew are. Back for a third series of the show that cuts and re-edits radio and TV to great satirical effect, they turn their scatter guns on a range of targets, from David Mitchell and his takeover of all broadcasting to 24-hour rolling news coverage of a Jeremy Paxman on the rampage, randomly firing questions at passers-by. Joining in the joke and enjoying having the mickey taken out of them are John Humphrys, Jenni Murray and Richard Bacon. It's like Feedback, but with more blood and guts!

It's been pleasing to see Armando Ianucci's polit-com promoted from BBC Four to BBC Two and reach a wider audience. Tonight, he playfully sets proceedings at another Beeb edifice, Radio 5 Live. After weeks of trading bitter blows in the press, minister Nicola Murray (the fantastic Rebecca Front) locks horns with her shadow live on Richard Bacon's late-night phone-in show. Publicity pit bull Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) listens in the relative comfort of his office until some breaking news makes life difficult for the hapless politicians. Spin doctors are soon dispatched to the studio for damage limitation - with the usual side order of swearing.

The invective weeps from the walls when two sultans of spin, Malcolm Tucker and Stewart Pearson, confront one another in a BBC radio studios corridor. The pair are doing a poor job of lurking behind the scenes as their two hapless puppets, Secretary of State Nicola Murray and her opposition counterpart Peter Mannion, unravel live on air on the Richard Bacon show. Murray's carefully nurtured agenda based on "inspiring people out of poverty" and "fourth sector pathfinders" (don't ask) tanks immediately and even the suave Mannion's "common sense checklist" is torpedoed before he even has chance to get going. Bacon (yes, it really is him) more than holds his own as his studio is invaded by shrieking apparatchiks and the chaos becomes almost Biblical - apart from the swearing, of course, which is as bracing and brilliant as a meteor shower. Along the way there are neat barbs aimed at people who send witless texts to radio shows, and Malcolm receives an offensive birthday cake.

A superb episode of Armando Iannucci's effortless political satire, as Nicola Murray and her opposition counterpart, Peter Mannion, appear on Richard Bacon's radio show. And the results are, as you'd expect, not pretty. But it's the encounter behind the scenes between Malcolm Tucker and Mannion's own wizard of spin, Stewart Pearson, where the real thrust of this episode lies. It's like the meeting of two powerful Jedi. Or something.

Richard Bacon on being in The Thick of It

Richard Bacon describes what it was like to take part in an episode of The Thick Of It.