{"id":2514,"date":"2009-03-18T23:25:30","date_gmt":"2009-03-18T23:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2009\/03\/a_celebration_o\/"},"modified":"2009-03-18T23:25:30","modified_gmt":"2009-03-18T23:25:30","slug":"a_celebration_o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/a_celebration_o\/","title":{"rendered":"A Celebration of Radio Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this evening, the Radio Academy<\/a> had one of its regular events – this one was a celebration of radio comedy<\/a>.
\nJon Holmes hosted the evening, speaking to two excellent proponents of comedy on radio: Barry Cryer and Steve Punt.
\n\"Radio<\/a>
\nBarry Cryer picked some his “desert island” comedy classics and we were treated to excerpts. So we had Around the Horn which is a fantastic show that I learnt about via BBC cassettes, the peerless Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive, and of course, I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue. The only programme of his that I really didn’t know was Bleak Expectations; I can see that I’m going to have to educate myself<\/a>.
\nVia the medium of video, Adam and Joe talked about an influential piece of comedy in Peter Cook’s calls to Clive Bull in the guise of Sven the Norwegian<\/a> (I listened to a lot of LBC around that time, but never heard about Sven until it was too late. I did, however, hear Clive Bull’s “talent show” radio of the same period. Bull’s still with LBC!). Adam and Joe mentioned that it was a regular thing that comics phoned in radio shows. Shocking!<\/a>
\n\"Radio<\/a>
\nSteve Punt had an interesting selection of influential radio comedy in that it’s not quite the usual selection of Radio 4 comedies. So he mentioned Kenny Everett’s Captain Kremen (something I tried listening to as a child but never really got. I didn’t listen to Capital either), and Adrian Juste’s Saturday lunchtime radio comedy show featuring lots of cut-up clips of comedy records interspersed with Juste’s own jokes and music. I do remember listening to that, and Juste was in the audience this evening.
\nPunt also referenced Steve Wright and his then original zoo format show with a cast of regular phone-in characters: Sid the manager et al. And finally, there was one Radio 4 comedy in amongst them all – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
\nFinally Lauren Lavergne appeared via the medium of video and told us she’d effectively just discovered On The Hour. Well the CDs were released just before Christmas!
\nWhat I did find interesting was that both Cryer and Punt had access to, at various times, “writers’ rooms” of sorts where comedians of the day gathered to talk to one another, exchange ideas, and make outgoing phone calls at the BBC’s expense.
\nAnd this kind of environment is important, we were told, since although you can become famous to an extent via YouTube today and get yourself discovered, until you’re produced by someone experienced, it’s hard to become fully formed.
\nI must admit that I came out enthused about listening to more radio comedy. I guess it’s a shame that commercial radio just isn’t able to do scripted comedy. Of course there are comics on the radio – and my employer has quite a few – but fully fledged scripted comedy is still exceptional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this evening, the Radio Academy had one of its regular events – this one was a celebration of radio comedy. Jon Holmes hosted the evening, speaking to two excellent proponents of comedy on radio: Barry Cryer and Steve Punt. Barry Cryer picked some his “desert island” comedy classics and we were treated to excerpts. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}