Speechification

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for a new episode of Flight of the Conchords on Radio 2. Good comedy on Radio 2. Who would have believed it? Ok, so it’s a repeat from 2005, but so utterly brilliant that it doesn’t matter.

Flight of the Conchords (”formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk parody duo”) are a recent personal favourite. Somehow hearing them again on Radio 2, with a repeat a week later on Radio 7 if you miss it, is always going to be more special than the HBO show on HBO. Here’s episode 4 (MP3, Real) for you. Get comfortable and prepare for a London flavoured treat, with narration by Rob Brydon and an appearance by Greg Proops.

Photo from muzikspy on Flickr.

We love Jacques Tati in our house. Well, I suppose it’s mostly me that likes him. My kids put up with him but only because they think he’s a sort of bleached Mr Bean. Mr Bean’s creator Rowan Atkinson makes an appearance in Rory Bremner’s half hour about the French genius - Atkinson reckons Bean isn’t as nice a person as Tati’s creation Hulot.

I like the part about Tati’s pioneering and inventive use of sound: the distinctive (and inexplicably hilarious) sound of that hotel swing door in M. Hulot’s holiday and the quite brilliant ’silent door’ in Playtime, for instance (MP3, Real)

The pic is a still from Mon Oncle, which I think is the best of Tati’s films.

Speaking of comedy, I want to remind you that tomorrow (that’s Monday) at 11:30 on Radio 4 you can hear the final episode of the first series of the best comedy on the radio right now (if you ask me): Sanjeev Kohli and Donald McLeary’s Fags, Mags and Bags: the surreal sitcom set in a Glasgow sweet shop. My family and I have been laughing like drains more or less continually since the first episode caught us completely by surprise in September.

I also, obviously, want it put on record that Fags, Mags and Bags is speechification’s first official tip for TV transfer in 2008. When the show turns up on the telly, please remember you heard it here first - and if they’ll take bets on this sort of thing at Ladbrokes I’d get round there sharpish. Here’s last week’s episode in case you missed it (MP3).

Comedy on Radio 4 is broad enough that there’s usually something good on. Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better and Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive have both finished now, but on the plus side That Mitchell and Webb Sound started again this week. I’m quietly hoping that Cowards will come back to radio again too.

Recently I’ve particularly been enjoying Dave Gorman’s Radio 4 show Genius, now nearing the end of its third series. Imagine the The Halfbakery as a radio show, hosted by Dave Gorman, and you’re most of the way there. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that many of the contributors to Genius are themselves ‘bakers too.)

This week’s episode, the penultimate in the series, tickled my ribs greatly. Particularly this suggestion from David Bateman from Liverpool:

Dear Genius,

My idea is to make the Isle of Wight symmetrical. The Isle of Wight is already very nearly symmetrical from east to west anyway, so we will simply perfect this symmetry. This exciting and forward-looking project will give an immense boost to the tourist industry at a surprisingly small cost, and with the destruction of only one major town. Ventnor.

Utter genius.

(MP3, Real)