Following the success of the last one—current Messiah: Christopher Hitchens—and because I am again busy, it’s time for another poll. As an experiment, I will allow you lot to add extra answers to the choices available:
Which of the following is most likely to make you switch off Radio 4?
- the sound of John Humphrys' voice
- the opening theme music of The Archers
- the arrival of the Tuesday-to-Thursday 6:30pm comedy
- realising that The Westminster Hour finished ages ago and, not only have you you allowed the ghastly educationalist assumptions of The Learning Curve to wash over you for half-an-hour—even its title is a misapplied, overused cliché—but you are five minutes into Something Understood and starting to believe that you are, like every decent person, a member of the Church of England
- You And Yours
- Eddie Mair1
- Just a Minute1
- Go4it1
- switching on halfway through The Afternoon Play only to be greeted by deeply unconvincing 'regional' accents and a plot about a daffy girl who thinks shes an angel—but is she? or is she?.....or IS she?1
- Any Questions?1
- Who is john humphrys?1
- All Of The Above1
- All of the above apart from Just A Minute1
- Any Answers1
Surely its got to be You and Yours?
Why they need to dedicate and hour to consumer issues every weekday I’ll never understand. Surely there are only so many overpriced gas bills or mis-sold endowments.
When I was a postman I used to listen to Radio 4 from the Today Programme to World at One every day, however even the inane playground banter of Radio 1 was preferable to You and Yours
Something Understood is the most dreadful programme ever, even worse than the appalling “Go4it”.
There is a desperate need for another decent spoken language station, so you can avoid the worst of both.
No contest-the Archers is enough to make a grown man cry.
Agreed, Something-thoroughly-obfuscated is truly dreadful. I imagine it to be like talking to Madeleine Bunting.
One bleak night I heard Something Understood presented by Madeleine Bunting.
Sweet Jesu! my full sympathies.
You seem to have struck a large number of nails amidships.
The obligatory lefty-liberal R4 comedy show by eight public school chaps (and one girl called Sally) who met at oxbridge (with 29 people credited with the script)
Go4It – talking down as she is spoke. Only if Patricia Hewitt presented it could it be more patronising.
The Afternoon Play (Saturday’s pretty poor too) with a lot of shouting and groaning in poor regional accents (remember the cast is four public school types who met at Oxbridge)
The Learning Curve – about state education, presented by a public school girl (I bet Libby was wizard at lacrosse) and produced by a grammar school girl.
Woman Sour.
You could give dishonourable mentions to Front Row (‘a new play about Iraq opens at the Tricycle, Kilburn tonight’) and the series of odds and sods (‘The Message’, ‘A Good Read’) seemingly designed as an additional pension plan for retired female Today and Woman Sour presenters.
Shameless something-or-other, but a couple of Archers-related posts
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2005/01/archers-knife-culture-and-self-harm.html
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2004/04/this-will-mean-nothing-to-those-who.html
[…] And he’s behind on Pootergeek’s poll. […]
Not fair! only one vote allowed, but I’d vote for all of them. And for that moment when you realise the weather forecast is over, even though you’ve been waiting for your region to come up.
The ****ing Archers. It’s the Status Quo of soaps. Or possible The Wurzels.
I will defend the Archers, and (especially) Something Understood, and Front Row (and more or less ANYTHING at the Glorious Trike of County K. too). SOME of those comedies aren’t necessarily bad, too – but they are always reassuringly BBC, proof that we live in civil society that has not yet collapsed into anarchy and vulgarity and horror. Long live the Beeb, in fact!
Go4It is bloody awful, though, it would be terrible to be a kid in an household where that formed part of the kultcha
Oh, are we being accused of being anti-BBC because we don’t like Something Understood?
by whom?
Laban Tall – I have to defend Women Glower. I think it’s an intelligent magazine programme, with a good mixture of topics.
And on Radio 4 drama – I’e just heard a sharp drama about the Labour victory of 1945 – where else would you hear something like that?
However I’m a huge Radio 4 fan excluding:-
Any Answers (no thanks)
Being lectured by comedians on what are supposed to be sketch shows
Humphrey Lyttleton’s risque jokes on Sorry I wanted a screw (ha! ha!). I don’t think blokes who are 110 should tell long-winded double entendre jokes.
The arrival of the Tuesday to Thursday 6.30pm comedy
There’s a particularly gruesome one on that repeated at nights called Revolting People all about the American Revolution.
Radio 4 on a Sunday is the sound of slow creeping death. Sarah montague is also vile on Today.
MJ – I have to defend the Now Show but that’s because I love Mitch Benn. Agree about the rest of the whitterers on it.
There have been great sketch shows on Radio 4 like Mitchell & Webb, Goodness Gracious Me, Dead Ringers – whenever I see them transferred to TV unless they are doing visual gags I think, What a waste of money on costumes and prosthetics when you got the same laughs from three unseen actors in front of a microphone.