… she always turns up in these programmes too. But other than that I couldn't agree more - and it seems the amount of amusing things that can be said about anything is wearing very thin. (What is this obsession the BBC has with 'comics'? They now seem to get every gig going, from plum acting roles to DJing jobs…)
As for the TV thing, Genius is an interesting case in point. This was in the higher echelon of the 6.30pm offerings, but I saw one episode of the TV version and everyone just seemed to be trying way too hard.

it seems the amount of amusing things that can be said about anything is wearing very thin

There's a column in that.

otherwise you are quite right.

It is like William Burroughs's "unidfferentiated tissue". The BBC have created a seething blob of comedian-flesh that can react to any topic by randomly forming eyes, mouths and organs of ironic simpering.

The horror of it all is that they HAVE real and unique comedic voices but inevitably hide them away at 11pm or 11am, as with the brilliant Sarah Millican, or the reliably hilarious Fags, Mags & Bags.

ia particularly painful on telly I reckon but programmes like 'Old Harry's Game' are consistently funny and pithy. ( Probably because Arthur Smith or Sue Perkins isn't in it ). I just hope some bright young exec in a Ted Baker suit and 'ironic' horn-rimmed specs isn't tempted by a late-night slot on BBC 3.

Being a panel show regular is one of the cosiest jobs around. I still like some of these shows, but they'd be greatly improved by the addition of different outsiders each week; that's why "Have I Got News For You" is still worth watching and why "Q.I." is more interesting when there's a Gyles Brandreth or a Richard E Grant present.

most of the people you mention are fine in small doses but this constant recycling is wasteful. David mitchell seems to have saved on rent and just sleeps at the BBC radio theatre.

I thought Eleven Quest was good the other day, it made we laugh and not just because I like fantasy films.

Just think, as long as "The unbelievable truth" is occupying the Monday night slot,it does mean that "Quote, Unquote" isn't.

...claims to have retired from doing panel shows now. Personally, I'm with Tim McGuire on this issue -- also, "The Museum Of Curiosity" is pretty entertaining and not really a 'game'.

that they have stopped running the painfully unfunny 'issues based' comedy-dramas which used to be in the 6:30 slot on Wednesdays, and which typically invlved a teacher or a social worker dealing with a serious problem while surrounded by thinly sketched comic sidekicks.
Then again, even that would be prefereable to The Now Show's mix of spending half the show building set-ups for unfunny pay-offs, repeating said pay-offs until the audience are bludgeoned into mistaking them for something amusing, and believing that a duff joke is transformed into comedy gold by setting it to song in doggrel rhyme. I can't say I'm a fan.

Clement Freud was the king by a mile, but Paul Merton and Tony Hawks keep the pole high from the (once) young 'uns. Never quite understood the pont of Wendy Richard on this show, which seemed not to get much of a mention in her obits, Word bloggees included.

is there? There must be some way of presenting comedy on TV and radio that doesn't rely on the panel show format (ironic or not). Especially as this dead, old format seems peculiar to the UK.

to panel games if only someone could come up such a thing.

...I recall a Spitting Image sketch from about 400 years ago which consisted of a bored looking David Baddiel puppet doing stand up whining 'Mrs Thatcher... isn't she a bit crap? University exams aren't they a bit, well, crap? Last night's telly - wasn't it a bit, like, crap?' all interspersed with cacophonous roars of laughter from the imagined crowd. They'd nailed his ENTIRE act. And smug people like David Mitchell are still doing that act to this day, oblivious to the threadbare nature of the thing...

...and yet I still enjoy such shows.

In its third series, Unbelievable Truth finally seems to have got the tone and pace right, realising that the game, which is essentially a bit clunky, needs to take a backseat to the banter. Will Self needs his ego clipped though.

Genuis and I've Never Seen Star Wars were both much better on radio than on TV, though both have actually had their moments. Johnny Vegas and Gorman in the revolving duvet was genuine laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Heresy has suffered by having Victoria Coren replace Baddiel - I find her curiously charmless as the presenter (a daming indightment in comparison to her predecessor, no?) though her links have been less stilted this series than her first - and having had all the good heresies explored during the first five series.

The Now Show continues to be the Now Show. It's comfortable and easy. It amuses enough to entertain, and has occasional moments of genuine excellence but when the News Quiz rolls round, it's always welcomed with open ears.

Part of the problem is that the comedians all seem to share a standard issue "BBC lefty" set of values - I don't want to see Jim Davidson start appearing, but something to break the hedgemony would inject a bit of life into some of these formats. I say this as someone who largely shares "BBC lefty" values.

I thought the pilot for 'I'm Spartacus' seemed promising, albeit quite reminiscent of King Stupid/99p Challenge.

Not quite an oxymoron but close. If Bleak Expectations gets repeated give that a go, it was really funny. Old Harry's game is always good. Down The Line has its moments. Most of the new panel games are pretty poor though, you wont hear me defending them.

The problem with it is that it often sounds as though the same people have been making variations of the same show for years and the stuff on BBC 7; Hancock, Round The Horne, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again are (gulp) better than the new stuff.

My own theory (and feel free to shoot it down) is that radio in the past allowed comedy mavericks to be on air a lot; Milligan, Hancock, Williams etc were regulars but you don't hear the Mavericks of today very often. Chris Morris hasn't done radio for years, Stuart Lee has only been a guest on a few shows, he hasn't starred in one (ever?), Jerry Sadowitz will never be on the radio. Why hasn't Daniel Kitson ever done a radio series? This leaves us with Perkins, Mitchell, Brigstocke, Locke and Jupitus doing everything.

Its a failure of nerve at radio 4.

Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive which brings a welcome dash of smarts / absurdity to the party.

JAM and ISIHAC remain the kings of the format. The Now Show is just the new News Huddlines.

... sounds like you'd get a variety of offerings - but it's The News Quiz everytime, so I stopped bothering with it. Have I Got News For You does it so much better.

It seems like it's turning into a proving ground for TV comedy - rather than just a proving ground for comedy.

Why don't they bring back Petticoat Line? Is Anona Winn still going? They could revolve Jenny Eclair, the aforementioned Lucy Porter, Shappi Khorsandi, Sue Perkins, Jo Brand et al… ad nauseam. Not forgetting, of course, Renee Houston.

is the best, but I've never heard him in the 6.30 slot, I've heard him during the day on occasion.

I'm always pleased to see him in the 6.30 slot - his shows have that pure silliness that reminds me of Round The Horne and its ilk.

Trite panel shows, throughout which you can hear middle class ladies (the only ones who would bother going to sit in a studio theatre someone and listen to this crap because they still believe in the idea that all of radio 4 is somehow 'improving') tittering uncontrolably to a mildly suggestive 'joke'. I have watched and loved some things that have reached the tv from radio 4 (the boosh for example), but most of the output, especially the panel games, are anachronisms long past their sell by date. The same can be said for most of radio 4's output, deadly dull documentaries, the ridiculous womans hour, plays written by middle class idiots who have never got over abigails party. The news output is OK but suffers from the jeremy paxman problem of believing in its own conclusions beyond any doubt and the pit pull grilling of interviewees when at times at little rational discussion would be more productive.

Comedy on radio 2 suffers the same problems, i.e its not funny. I cannot believe it took them so long to change the schedules so you didnt have the comedy hour following Jonathon Ross, which was like asking me to go on and tell and few jokes after richard pryor.

I seem to have slowly changed my radio listening over the past 10 years from the earnest (4) to the lazy (five live, of which I still quite like the Simon Mayo show in the afternoon, and the rest is shit, particularly the drive time news show, sheesh that stinks) to the blokeish.

I now split my time in the car (which is substantial) between talk sport (yes, i know, adverts, slightly reactionary at times, but at least its honest and has no pretentions to be anything other than a provider a largely sports based chat) where the Ian Wright and Adrian Durham show is the bast thing to listen to at drive time and podcasts (thank god for podcasts) and of course, occasionally music! In the office the afternoon is spent with Robert Elms and Danny Baker (both not everyones CofT but for my money informative, enthusiastic and inclusive broadbasters) on bbc london

Sorry to go on but radio is a medium i care very much for (no-one was more exited than me at the luanch of 6 music for example, a station i loved, then liked, then tolerated and now loathe) and i expect good, high quality, choices for all tastes, perhaps this is just what the age of the podcast is going to give us?

Down The Line was quite good (if im thinking of the correct one, with paul Whitehouse?)

...is the way the BBC views Radio 4 comedy - ie as a nursery slope for new talent or, to use another metaphor, a bridge between Cambridge Footlights and a job in TV.

The Now Show - basically the son of Weekending - is a place where Oxbridge grads can get themselves known, simply by turning up and pitching jokes. The BBC can call this "nurturing new talent", but I tend to think of it as a piss-poor comedy show which ensures continued jobs for the boys.

Add to this the problem that most newish comedians seem to have hatched from a rather smug sneering metropolitan consensus which holds certain opinions inviolate - religion is stupid, old people smell of wee, and it's really daring to make jokes about child abuse (as someone wrote in Word recently - paedophile jokes are now the mother-in-law gags of our age).

And it's not just Radio 4.

Anyone else fed up with Radio 2 getting 'celebrity' presenters, ie, people off the telly? They're no good on the radio, any of 'em*. At least they never invited Davina back after her first go. Dermot O'Dreary's still there though. Paul O'Grady and now blimmin' Alan Carr. And Richard Madeley last week. It's worrying when you're really happy when a proper radio DJ such as Zoe Ball stands in for a regular.

[*] Actually, Claudia Winkelman does a good job, IMHO.

David, you're right in your assertion that the same voices appear time and again on R4, but it was always thus. It's just as the the older ones fall out of favour, retire or die they are replaced by a new set of revolving personalities.
However The News Quiz is usually an excellent half hour's entertainment. I'll argue the point with anyone who suggests HIGNFY is a better programme. It's had its moments, but has never bettered TNQ and now is so lame someone needs to call the vet in, to put it out of its misery.

I went to sit in the audience of the first (BBC radio) episode of "Teenage Kicks". If my fourteen-year-old self had known that I would be a mere 4 foot from Ade Edmondson and Ben Elton.... Ade's warm-up was charming, self-depreciating and funny. His script wasn't great though. Perhaps he should have asked his good mate Ben to take a look at it. When it was commissioned as a TV programme, I really did wonder.
On Rhona Cameron, she will pleased to learn that graduates from Redbrick Universities (and, gasp, dropouts like Dave Gorman)are now also in with a chance in Radio comedy. I believe Steve Coogan went to, ahem, a "Polytechnic".

Is the ultimate unfunny Oxbridge comic. He's a comedy black hole: funny stuff can't escape the gravitational pull of his smug, right on demeanour & foghorn delivery. I saw him at the Hay Festival a few years ago and he managed to turn a big tent of paying customers into a mob baying for his blood. He lost the room during a Guardian-friendly routine about the improbability of his wife being raped by immigrants.

And did you see him with David Davis on INSSW where he was telling Davis that the pistols were the first boy band, completely serious. whatever you think of mclarens role in the pistols (who were a band before he get hold of them) it is incredible to lable them a 'boyband' and enabled that idiot davis to smugly condemn them even further as if they were the osmonds with swearing and lip service politics. Whetever you think of them, there was a whole lot more to them than that. Besides which there would be a whole line of boybands to pick from before '75.

but it's just one of those 'what's the deal with..?' shows that fills time while I'm reading the paper waiting for The Archers to come on. Bellowing comedians battling for airtime. It doesn't raise so much as a wry eyebrow from me.

I'm not a fan of panel shows. Buzzcocks did for them as far as I'm concerned. I'm sick of comedians trying to out-funny each other at the expense of anything else.

Doesn't Sandi Toksvig sound like a fruitier Margaret from The Apprentice?

There are few things worse in life than downloading the Radio 4 Friday night comedy podcast on a Monday morning, sticking it on your Ipod, stepping out the front door and realising that the News Quiz's run has finished and it's the return of the Now Show. Clouds darken the sky, you know the tram is going to be late and the day is ruined before the credits are even done.

Honorable mention for Armando Iannucci, but the rest of them, genius, heresy and the unbelievable shite, sorry.. truth, are very very poor.

that Sandi Toksvig is funny.

...and I'll tell you why.
She has a skill which is really important on radio.
Barry Crier has also got it and hardly any of the other names mentioned on this thread have got it.
She laughs readily and engagingly.

Doesn't make me laugh though.

Have any of you seen any body who is really funny rather than someone who is amusing? I cant think of any offhand bar maybe Daniel Kitson but he's never on radio4. But arent these shows just padding to mfill a slot every night. I think it must be hard to come up with 150 minutes of original comedy every week

This thread has turned into a whingefest. Mr Hepworth remarks about many Radio 4 panel games being similar and it's open season on anyone who dares to try to make us laugh.

Comedy, like music, is subjective. What I find funny may not be funny to others and vice versa. Jim Davidson sells out the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton but you would not get me there if you paid me (well, unless it was a LOT of money).

There are perhaps too many panel games and they do make too much use of a fairly small band of people. But that doesn't mean that "The Unbelievable Truth" doesn't make me laugh or pass an entertaining half hour. I don't like "Quote, Unquote" but it's been running for so long that I assume there's some research to say it's popular with some. I don't subscribe to the view that a radio station should only transmit programmes I like any more than I believe that the Word should only carry articles about musicians I like.

I'm not sure why either "The News Quiz" or "The Now Show" have come in for such a kicking. I've got into the habit now of listening to the podcast of whichever is running as I do my weekly grocery shop. Either is capable of attracting puzzled looks from my fellow Sainsburys shoppers as I laugh out loud. As is the Kermode/Mayo film review which I also listen to while filling the trolley. It's not unconditional love. I'm not fond of either the Brigstocke interludes or the John Holmes bits. And Mitch Benn can be hit or miss (but I can forgive him a lot for coming up with "Everyone sounds like Coldplay now").

And "Care in the Community", "Old Harry's Game" and "Bleak Expectations" are all excellent and I hope they never transfer to TV.

...makes be ashamed to be Scottish.
The News Quiz should've been put down when Alan Coren dropped off.
It's bloody awful. Especially when either Fred ("ah wiz an accountant, ye knaw") and / or Sue Perkins are on. About as funny as a burning orphanage.

Just A Minute should've been put down when Clement Freud passed away.
Likewise, I'm Sorry... and the Humph.

Both shows completely pointless (nay, soul-less) without either.

BTW Dave H. - presumably you discussed this thread from yer underling Andrew Collins (i.e. host of the fearfully awful "Banter" on R4) in advance?

Sorry, but just can't bring myself to slate Radio 4. I love it and its funny (and unfunny Elvenquest) little ways.

(edit: used to be on when I did my homework-I think I am living my life backwards ...in that I now listen mostly to R3 and catch the comedy podcasts, now y'all have told me about them ...when will I migrate to R2 and then R1 I wonder ?)

I remember seeing a show about Radio 4 comedy narrated by Stephen Fry. It was basically just a self-congratulatory list of things that have gone from Radio 4 to BBC tv, right back to when it was the slow programme and the heavy programme and so on. Nevertheless, the RT gave it a choice.

Anyway this executive (in a linen suit) came on screen with an extremely smug face and voice and said, "Radio 4 comedy is a great breeding ground. What can happen is a show that does well on Radio 4 can make a series on BBC3 or BBC4 and if that goes well we move them onto BBC2 and then (pause) if the ratings are great, they get moved right up to BBC1! Then you can get really amazing viewing figures." (look of ecstasy on face)

Like we hadn't noticed! Like we hadn't felt annoyed that things get moved from the channels we like and then often get shit! Like the BBC viewers give a fuck how many people watch their favourite show (unless it's threatened with the plug).

have become too similar and too often.

Marcus Brigstocke has become too over exposed, he was funny, now he's too familiar.

I hate the Now Show but love The News Quiz. Jeremy Hardy is ace, I'm sure he'd be a "Word" reader.

Still has it's comedy moments. Count Arthur, although the quality is going a bit, The Castle was brilliant, Clare in the Community goes from strength to strength.

I had a real fondness for The Maltby Inheritance.

The documentaries are still streets ahead of anything anywhere.

Front Row is excellent too.

You chaps over there in the Mother Country really need to experience life outside the UK. some of us exist under the jackboot of er.. non-BBCradiocomedyness. Savour what you have for the National Treasure that it is.

I spend so much on buying BBC comedy DVDs and CDs I'll probably have to let my Word subscription lapse. After all, it is SEVENTY BLOODY QUID A YEAR!!!

Goodness knows I'm a Radio 4 fan, bought the biog, done the studio tour, wake up with Today each, er, day, (dream team Evans & Montgomery) and yet...

I don't find David Baddiel funny - or know anyone who does. I find Arthur Smith even less funny. Is he the token working class cheeky chappie employed to distract us from discovering the Oxbridge comic freemasonry of Portland Place?

A year ago David Mitchell was amusing, now I want to slap him. Ubiquity is apparently the antithesis of comic invention.

Is there a law saying a place at Cambridge automatically affords the opportunity to appear in a BBC quiz show? If so it's become subject to another, that of desperately diminishing returns.

Was 'I'm Sorry...' really ever as good as everyone pretends? Or only heard through the rose-tinted hearing aids of those who wished it were that good?

Big it up for Andy Hamilton, and be grateful Michael McIntyre isn't on radio - yet...

The production side is full of a lot of privately educated Oxbridge types who find similar people to themselves funny, or at least safe to use on programmes. It creates an atmosphere of, not quite complacency, but certainly of conformity. Good stuff appears sometimes, not all radio comedy is rubbish, but there's a collective mindset mindset which seems all pervasive at the BBC.

But no one has mentioned one very simple problem with Radio 4 comedy and that's simply that it's on at half six in the evening or half eleven in the morning. It makes the programme editors (especially post Brand and Ross) extremely nervous about making anything which can be remotely construed as offensive.

Now many people will rightly point out that this wasn't a problem in the past and that on air comedy thrived. The difference seems to me to be that in the past comedians learnt their trade partly in variety shows aimed at families, learning in the process how to deliver dodgy material in non offensive, family friendly ways. This made the crossover to radio possibly easier. Nowadays comedians learn their trade on the stand up circuit, the values there are different and when faced with a six thirty programme slot some of them really struggle.

Which results in programme makers returning time and time again to the same old voices and similar programmes clogging the airwaves.

There wasn't a time when it wasn't solely devoted to comedy, but was a mix of many of the panel games listed above along with Brain Of Britain, Round Britain Quiz, that music quiz the late Ned Sherrin used to host and I'm sure many more.
I'd much rather have some of those than The Now Show.
I don't understand, along with many others, how Quote Unqoute survives.

Cointerpoint is still going; it's now presented by Paul Gambacini, and broadcast on Mondays at 1:30pm (repeated on Saturdays at 11pm).

I won one of the heats of the current series, broadcast a few weeks ago, and will be appearing in one of the yet-to-be-broadcast semi finals very soon.

In a niche previously inhabited by Lance Percival*, the topical comedy-song is a hard one to pull off but Mitch Benn always comes up with something pretty funny.

*He used to do a chillingly unfunny "calypso" based on the week's news. Same tune, same cod-Jamaican accent, same glassy-eyed Basil Brush stare every week. Only eclipsed in awfulness by the Radio 1 DJ Mike Read adopting the same device to do his own, even less funny version.

When David Baddiel used to be mentioned in conversation, friends used to repeat his name in an exaggeration of Mr B's own nasal whine (as replicated above).

There are very few of the programmes or participants that I actively dislike. I like The News Quiz, Unbelievable Truth, Never Seen Star Wars, Old Harry's Game and I LOVE Just A Minute, which can survive without Clement Freud just as it survived without Kenneth Williams, Peter Jones or Linda Smith. I like Marcus Brigstocke, Francis Wheen, Andy Hamilton and Mark Steele and I love Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Hardy, Arthur Smith and David Mitchell.

I may not like The Now Show or Heresy, but I can kind of see why people might. And the spread of opinion on this thread shows that most of the shows in the schedule have their appeal.

Any or all of these shows and people are fine. But the point that I think David H is making is not about any given part of the schedule but about its homogeneity taken as a whole. It's the ominpresence of the same formats and voices that starts to pall.

Milton Jones is good, but where are the other odd and interesting voices? WHY are Sarah Millican or Sanjeev Kohli not given prime time series? Why is there NOTHING that makes me sit up and take notice?

The very few exceptions to the rule are either bonkers (ISIHAC - just a vague collection of silly things to do) or incredibly simple (JAM, The News Quiz). These formats will and can survive, as long as the hosts and guests are on form.

ISIHAC will survive beyond Humph as long as the new hosts go with the spirit of the show rather than enforce their own ego (and I think Messrs Fry, Brydon and Dee will be fine).

JAM owes much to Nicholas Parsons, Clement Freud and Paul Merton, but just as it survived the loss of Kenneth Williams, it can go on with its huge repertoire of guests (Wendy Richard, Pam Ayres for goodness sake!)

Most of the others (Star Wars, Genius, Unbelievable Truth) are tedious after a couple of episodes...

The best comedy is often unscripted podcasts, as these are the most natural and therefore easy to connect with for the listener, like The Word's very excellent podcast. Also Richard Herring and Andrew Collins. John Oliver is a comedy genius, but when he's caught in the confines of the (still pretty good) Bugle podcast, I sometimes feel faintly disappointed...

"Are you British? Is it true that you have to buy a license each year to own a television set? And that you can go to prison if you don't?" The rest of the World finds this arrangement a bit strange. It's their Weird Fact about the UK.

When Ross and Brand had their adventure in comedy the press questioned the continued existence of the license fee for weeks. It was a crisis at the BBC: the person on watch (the Head of Radio 2) was made to walk the plank.

So it's no surprise that BBC radio comedy has been placed in the hands of dependable, house-trained humorists who know precisely where the boundaries are and can be relied upon not to frighten the horses. Comedy upsets people in a way that nature documentaries and costume dramas do not.

Perhaps the BBC believes that people with good degrees from Oxford or Cambridge can be trusted to hold back the funnier, but risky, stuff. Perhaps they believe that the skills required to write a thesis are transferable to writing a comedy. It might explain why some sketch shows only do sketches that play with other broadcast genres. A sketch set in a supermarket enters dangerous territory; a sketch set within the BBC guidelines for a Sunday evening detective story is perfectly safe.

As Mr. Hepworth points out, all the shows are coming from the same place. There are plenty of other ways of raising a laugh. (And I'm always delighted when I discover a new one to me.) Some of the funniest appear quite gentle. Entire comedic genres have been left to moulder.

Even Peter Baynham's surrealist fancies would be too unpredictable for BBC Radio 4 now. And nothing like Chris Morris's Radio 1 shows, circa 1994, will ever be heard on BBC Radio again.

Not that comedy has to be 'near the knuckle'. Ronnie Barker shared a few insights with his biographer. A character is created, acquires depth, things happen and they respond in a way that makes some listeners laugh. There's only so much you can do with them. "Ed Reardon's Week" is the sole, recent series I recall to feature characters that offer more than cartoons. To be frank, there is a lot more going on in the relationships between the characters in CBBC's "Shaun the Sheep" than you will find inside a current BBC Radio comedy.

I cannot be bothered to listen to any more bland, consensus comedy. I must be missing the joke when Marcus Brigstocke rants against poor people who live on cheap food. It's a pretty poor state of affairs when one misses the comparitively 'vicious satire' of "The News Huddlines": contemporary lyrics to a music hall standard, June Whitfield in the same sketch as a smutty joke and, praise be, a few gags about the people in power. With Roy Hudd saying, "Ye-es!," to the audience when they like one.

By the way, I cannot remember the last time I heard 'bad language' on BBC Radio. I'm not complaining. It's interesting how different that is to the quantity of swearing on BBC Television. I don't understand the distinction between them, myself.

I suppose that quoting from a poem is one of the few opportunities BBC Radio 4 or a judge can swear with impunity. I cannot recall the last time I heard the f word on BBC Radio 5 Live, or Talk Sport for that matter. Both stations apologise when callers use the kind of language you might hear on "Steptoe and Son".

In the 1980s every occurrence of the f word on television merited a newspaper article. And the "NME" never printed the word in full. I saw it in "Heat" magazine a few months ago where the word "very" would have been far more effective. I get the impression that people in the media do a lot of swearing. I think they have this notion that everyone else swears all the time. I have heard the f word used once, only once, in my (public sector) workplace during the past ten and a half years. Young-adults-who-break-the-law I have met never swear: it attracts attention.

it is not at all infrequently that my clintele slip in a eff or a blind, as they try to describe a pain or an experience, usually then apologising profusely for desecrating my temple. I usually reassure them by assuring them I am familiar with the word.