Speechification

James Bond just won’t go away will he? Here’s a nice Sunday afternoon doc about Kingsley Amis’ surprising 007 fixation and the five (count them—five) books he wrote about him in the 1950s. Charlie Higson, who writes the really excellent Young Bond series (come on Charlie, get on with the next one!) presents and Amis junior contributes. Very good (MP3).

Steve recently posted an episode of the Reunion. It’s a great show and the most recent episode, which reunites the creators of Withnail and I (surely one of the best British films of all time), is possibly the best yet. [MP3]

Sue MacGregor introduces and interviews Richard E Grant (Withnail), Paul McGann (Marwood), Ralph Brown (Danny) and Bruce Robinson (the writer & director) as well as an interview with Richard Griffiths (Monty).

At the end of the Seventies John Cooper Clarke lived in a little house opposite the front gates of my Secondary school in not-very-glamorous-but-not- very-gritty-either Stevenage, which is a new town at the wrong end of Hertfordshire. His presence there (I didn’t imagine it did I? Is there any evidence that he did live there?) was so unlikely and such a mad, peacock-haired challenge to the dreary suburban surroundings that boys I knew used to gather outside his house and throw chip papers and coke cans at him when he came out.

He passed by, implacable and apparently unmoved. Later he’d show up as support at practically every gig I ever attended. In fact I seem to remember thinking he must be resident at The Hammersmith Palais (or was it The Lyceum?). So here’s a lovely half hour about the man from the other reason I cut my hair weird and bought an Oxfam overcoat: Paul Morley (MP3).

Here’s the programme’s web page and here’s its press release, which has some more information.

4 Stands Up is an occasional standup comedy show on Radio 4. This week, Michael McIntyre (with the really interesting voice) introduces Josie Long, Colin and Fergus and Ed Byrne. [MP3]

If you’re reading this and you happen to work at the BBC, you might be interested to know that either the listen again page or the programmes page for this show seems to be confused. This episode was broadcast last night (6th May) and stars Josie Long, Colin and Fergus and Ed Byrne, which I think makes it episode 4, yet seems to be linked from the page for episode 3 (despite it not being the one with Shappi Khorsandi, Wil Hodgson and Rhod Gilbert). Of course, Programmes is a beta (and it’s great, and getting better) so all is forgiven. Thanks.

This show’s a bit like when you’re a kid and your friend’s parents are Seventh Day Adventists or Jehovah’s Witnesses or something and you’re dying to get a look at the inside of their house to see if they have an altar or interesting dietary habits and then they turn out to be just like your own Mum and Dad (only no Christmas presents—which is just inhuman). It’s about The Socialist Workers Party and it got me grumbling and groaning round the house (”Bloody Trots”) a few weeks ago.

I never attained the heights of political awareness that my SWP mates did. But that didn’t stop them bugging me for years (and selling me their infernal, braindead newspaper in my own front room). So I wasn’t very positively disposed towards this 15-minute doc (part one of two) about the party. But the members and loyalists interviewed are less nutty and self-righteous than I remember and they provide some interesting insight into the ways of Britain’s largest kooky political tribe (but none at all into their actual politics, which is a pity—maybe that was in part two). MP3.

The shows originally went out as part of Sunday evening’s excellent Westminster Hour and they have a good archive so you can listen to both shows again here.

I’m only putting this up because I was goaded to by ‘Birmingham: It’s Not Shit (mildly sarcastic since 2002)’. The best bit of this essentially indescribable doc is the laughter of a contemporary Brummie audience at the 1980 vision of their city presented in ‘Telly Savalas looks at Birmingham’. You can see parts of the film itself here and here. (MP3)

Humph was Shadow Controller of Radio 4. He was secretly in charge of the whole thing. You can’t understate his importance to the network. Only in the next weeks and months will we understand what we’ve lost. Humphrey Lyttelton was an accidental comic genius who, over the decades, came to set the station’s comedic tone: which was somewhere between withering senior common room irony and joyful, anarchic surrealism—and all without writing a single word.

While Clue was moving to the centre of the British radio comedy universe, becoming its timeless and unassailable mascot, Humph was modestly assuming the top spot himself. Shows came and went, comedians came and went. None could touch Humph who was, after all, a bloody trumpeter. We’ve lost our Controller of Beautifully Timed Sarcasm and our Controller of Barely Permissible Innuendo. Worse than that, I think we’re going to find we’ve lost our comedy anchor.

Here, to remember him by, is an edition of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue from 1998. It was recorded in Windsor (MP3).

Ed Reardon is the man I sometimes fear I’m turning into: an irascible failure, an over-educated, unemployable—but somehow undefeated—grumpy old man. I even find myself making that kind of grunting sound he produces when frustrated. I think Reardon is the current holder of the title ‘Britain’s Best Comic Creation’ and I assume that a translation to TV is imminent, although I think the fact that Christopher Douglas—who co-writes the stuff (with Andrew Nickolds) and plays Reardon himself—is a bit young for the role might be impeding the move. Here’s an episode from the fourth series that originally went out late last year and is being repeated now. Brilliant (MP3).

This is just lovely. I could listen to old men remembering interesting lives forever anyway, but one of these old men invented Minnie The Minx for The Beano. And the others drew or edited or wrote storylines for The Dandy at DC Thompson in Dundee. Morris Heggie and Dave Torrie both edited The Dandy (in 71 years the comic has had four editors), Bill Ritchie and Jim Petrie were artists and Walter Fearne worked his way up from storylines to Managing Editor. What a life to look back on… (MP3)

Simple and clever news radio from The Today Programme. Mike Leigh just made a film about happiness and Professor Richard Layard has been researching happiness for years. In fact Layard recently wrote an important report for the UK Government in which he proposed that we spend a lot more money on the kinds of psychotherapy that have been shown to produce happiness. He’s a happiness guy. So, anyway, the Today people put them together for an eight minute interview and it’s not polished or deliberate but just really interesting stuff (MP3).