The Now Show

What's the most madcap thing you've ever done?

Tomorrow night sees the return of the award-winning The Now Show to BBC Radio 4, for its thirtieth series. And thanks to the advances of the interwebs, now you can be a part of it - even if you can't make it to the recording.

Good news: The Now Show's back

The Radio 4 comedy sketch show in which Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis offer their satirical take the on the week's news returns.

The Now Show, the vehicle for comedians Punt and Dennis, will be renamed The Vote Now Show, for the duration of the election campaign and broadcast every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Now Show geography

When The Now Show asked for news from listeners around the world, 621 podcast subscribers replied, from 72 different countries.

On The Now Show (Radio 4, Friday, 6.30pm), broadcast from the Latitude Festival to no obvious advantage (does applause sound any different from a tent in glorious, sodden, Suffolk? I think not), Mitch Benn once again provided the highlight. Singing a song about England's glorious draw in the first Test against Australia, he chose to focus, not on Paul Collingwood's manly six-hour defiance of the perfidious Down Underers, nor indeed on James Anderson and Monty Panesar's "they shall not pass" last-wicket stand, but on the time-wasting that so riled Ricky Ponting, to the intense joy of right-thinking people everywhere. Thus he wrote a song that did not nothing but waste time. "This is my song about the Ashes," the last verse began, as had all the others, "It did what it was supposed to do. I hope you like my song about the Ashes. And if you are Australian, sod you." Genius.

BBC in IRA row

The BBC is at the centre of another bad taste row after two radio presenters compared Michael Jackson to the IRA. Comedians Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis made light of the troubles in Northern Ireland by referring to the pop star and terrorist group as "Eighties celebrities" on The Now Show.

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis may be names that TV viewers vaguely remember from The Jasper Carrot Show, but radio fans know just how good they are at dissecting the news with clinical precision. If BBC 1's Have I Got News For You is a blunt instrument, then Radio 4's The Now Show is the delicate scalpel of a heart transplant.

The format is pretty steady, with Punt and Dennis opening and closing the show, firing at a bucket load of targets and dropping in a number of running jokes for the dedicated listener (keep your ears open for a Donald Pleasance Great Escape 'I can see perfectly'). Alongside them are comedians Jon Holmes and Marcus Bridgestock, the former answering readers 'letters and emails,' while Bridgestock has a polemic that makes him the closest the UK has to Ketih Olberman. And then there's Mitch Benn, the comedy collossus with a guitar, putting the week's highlights to music.

Welcome back, my friends, to the sequence of news-based satire programmes that seemingly never ends. After six weeks of The News Quiz, we now have six of The Now Show, which will doubtless give way to Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive and thence to The News Quiz again in the spring. Perhaps Radio 4 thinks that life is hard enough at the moment without shocking us with the new at the end of a hard week. And, to be fair, the last series of The Now Show was something of a comeback to form, with the credit crunch, the re-emergence of Peter Mandelson and the sheer otherworldliness of Sarah Palin providing plenty of grist to the mill for Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis, Marcus Brigstocke, Jon Holmes, Laura Shavin and Mitch Benn.

As the red-hot debate on how London-centric and middle-class Radio 4 is (or is not) continues to rage, one of the shows at the heat of the fire returns for its 25th series. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis's takes on the week's news are the best in current satirical shows for thousands, but the work of 'self-satisfied, self-appointed, elite, liberal London tosspots' according to one dissatisfied listener. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. If you haven't laughed after the first five minutes, then switch off and wait for he Archers.

The Now Show is the best political satire on radio