Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer at 90: why he's still as relevant today

I am one of those people who finds nothing more depressing than a song that is trying to make me happy; I have only to wake up to "What a Wonderful World" or "Walking on Sunshine" on the radio to be cast into gloom for the rest of the morning. What really cheers me up are songs about nuclear holocaust, venereal disease, racism, murder and drug dealers preying on children. So on behalf of all people of similarly depraved taste, let me salute our patron saint, the pianist, singer and songwriter Tom Lehrer, who is 90 today.

Funnier than Baker, funnier than Henry, have always been Enfield and Whitehouse, who had an hour to look back on themselves with the savage glee of hindsight in An Evening With Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. They didn't have much to bemoan. The posho stuff (lovely skit about upmarket novelties) balanced all, I think, the prole-scum stuff. They even took the rip, and even a bit nastily at that, out of a couple of our saints, Lenny Henry and Stephen Hawking. Lenny was played as blacked-up, possessed of an impenetrable Dudley accent and stuck in a Travelodge bed. Ouch. Stevey-boy lolled with lipstick on, and swore energetically. Satire, despite the sainted Tom Lehrer's pronouncement, is not dead. It is, as long as Enfield and Whitehouse (and Punt, Dennis, Iannucci, Jupp) survive, not even smelling that bad.

The Stephen Frizzle three minute interview

Newcastle's own Stephen 'Friz' Frizzle is a comedy musician who perfroms puns in song form at the piano. Why yes, exactly like Tom Lehrer, Richard Stilgoe, Victoria Wood and Amateur Transplants. But Friz is the youngest, so he has the advantage. His Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, for one perfromance only, is Harry My Cat Died.

Comedy Prom review

If we can get through this review without provoking Tim Minchin to write a song about it, we'll have achieved some kind of closure. Six summers ago, when a Guardian critic eviscerated the kohl-hogging Aussie Tom Lehrer's Edinburgh debut, Minchin retorted by tearing the review into bits in a tune you can still hear on YouTube.

As proven by this amiable documentary, hallowed practitioners of the musical spoof include acts as diverse as Bill Bailey, The Two Ronnies, Tom Lehrer, Monty Python and Victoria Wood, who's breathlessly funny Let's Do It is one of the greatest comedy songs ever written, and I'll mud-wrestle anyone who says otherwise.

All of which poses the question: why can't all channels be as good as this?