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Stephen Fry Comedy Controller on Radio 4 Extra

2014-12-05T10:58:12+00:00

Editor's note: Actor, writer, wit and naughty national treasure Stephen Fry chooses his favourite comedies from the BBC radio archive as Comedy Controller on Radio 4 Extra. Here, programme producer Peter McHugh talks about making the programme.

When you make a programme it’s always good to get as much publicity as possible. To get the message out to as many listeners as you can, that something good is going to happen. It can be tricky, in big media organisations, to negotiate the ever choppy waters of ‘publicity priorities ’. So when I arrived at 4 Extra one morning I was surprised when a colleague asked me if I’d seen BBC Breakfast? Just what have you been up to? they wondered. I was suddenly drawn with the same fascination some people describe when they look over a cliff edge…

It turned out that Stephen Fry been on the famous red sofa that morning. That the interview had become a bit of a news story, creating its own social media tide. And that I was somehow - however unwittingly - involved. Stephen had revealed he’d been to BBC Broadcasting House in London that weekend, to curate some of his favourite radio comedy programmes for Radio 4 Extra. And after having a lovely time, he’d headed back home.

Once there he decided to take a nap. A nap that turned into a slumber, which then caused him to sleep right through tea – not just any tea mind, but Tea With Al Pacino. I’ve deployed capitals because it could make a lovely title for a short story.

PA’s, celebrity minders, all and sundry were put into full scale panic mode after the missing ‘national treasure’ - (or should that be ‘naughty national treasure’ given Stephen’s candour in the latest volume of his autobiography) left the Oscar winning actor twiddling his thumbs - but I like to think he was slowly stirring his tea, with true Godfather method menace - that afternoon.

I’m pretty certain that we hadn’t worn him out that much as he departed our studio, before snoozing got the better of him. But one thing I am sure of is that Stephen Fry loves, no, Stephen Fry adores radio. In this Saturday’s Comedy Controller he explains that radio comedy is, “part of the way I speak, part of the way I think, part of the way I react…a full part of my writing and comedy style owes everything to listening to the tones of funny people”.

Twice before I’ve spoken with him for 4 Extra about matters radio. In 2012 he joined in our 45th Anniversary celebration of all things Just A Minute.

And last Christmas he took part in our Christmas Day radio tribute to Richard Briers. As a fellow ‘Wodetonian’, he picked one of Richard’s classic BBC radio performances as Bertie Wooster in PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster

When we suggested that he choose six of his favourite radio comedies he responded instantly – that however stuffed his diary was (and I can assure you it is) – he would love to be a 4 Extra Comedy Controller. Stephen’s choices take in: childhood memories at home (The Men From The Ministry, 1972); a treasured friendship with the writer Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, 1978); the chance to be on the radio himself in Saturday Night Fry (1988); moving onwards to the acute media satire of On the Hour (1992); it acknowledges great radio comedy institutions in the shape of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (2003), that Stephen says, really could “only be British”; and arrives at the playful radio mischief and misdirection of Down The Line (2007).

Whatever the choice, they all confirm Stephen’s abiding thought during his Comedy Controllership on 4 Extra: ‘though radio may be a poor relation of television insofar as monetary considerations go….it is a rich one where it matters in terms of depth and intimacy”. In comparison with television, “radio is so much more”.

Peter McHugh produces Comedy Controller: Stephen Fry

Listen to Comedy Controller: Stephen Fry

(0900 and 1900 Saturday 6 December 2014 and on BBC iPlayer for 30 days after TX)

Stephen Fry's In the Beginning was the Nerd

2009-09-29T08:00:00+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mz53r

The Western world, with a few notable exceptions, poured billions of dollars into electronic pesticides to defeat the Y2K bug. Only to find that for the most part it could have been defeated by turning the systems off then on again. Shades of the hit C4 comedy The IT Crowd. In reality it's the solution put forward in Stephen Fry's Archive on Four next Saturday by Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge University, a world authority. Here - exclusive to the blog - is the full interview Stephen conducted with Ross on the crisis that fizzled out and the prospects of a real future digital Armageddon:

So, why the silence when the bug didn't bite? The answer's in the programme. Politicians, experts and businessmen all profited in status or cash from the threat. In the media - to paraphrase the crime reporters - it bled so it led. In the USA, government brazenly claimed victory for its defeat. In reality, the enemy was almost totally imaginary. But it's useless blaming the great and the good. It was inevitable. We'd been told repeatedly that this brilliant new technology would change the world. Then we were told it could all stop on the stroke of one spookily special midnight. We were the newly addicted, suddenly faced with the prospect that our supply was fatally endangered. There was only one thing we could do. Panic. Then spend millions fixing it. Sorry, that's two things.

Nick Baker is Producer of In the Beginning was the Nerd.

Stephen Fry's In the Beginning was the Nerd transmits in the Archive on 4 slot on Saturday 3 October at 2000.
Ross Anderson's home page.
'Nerd' defined by Wikipedia. Likewise 'geek', a related term.
Stephen Fry has a blog and he's on Twitter. And, since you asked, so is the Radio 4 blog.
The picture, Socializing Young Nerds @ Foo Camp 08 is by Jane McGonigal. Used under licence.

Just a Minute reloaded

2009-09-24T08:20:03+00:00

I think if anyone had thought it worth asking me about creating a series of short animations based on clips from Just a Minute, I'd have said something like "don't bother. It'll never work". Thankfully, nobody asked me and the resulting videos are all brilliant - really witty collisions of words and images. This one's by Stuart Langfield. And it's lovely to hear Clement Freud's voice again. Makes me wonder what other Radio 4 content could be revived in this way? The Moral Maze? The Archers? The Shipping Forecast?

They call the animations Just a Minute Reloaded and you're encouraged to embed them on your own web site. Just click the 'embed' button. Spread the joy.

David Thair's BBC Comedy Blog often features Radio 4 programmes as well as lots of television comedy that obviously originated on Radio 4 in the first place.
The current series of Just a Minute, in its native pure audio form, has two more episodes to go. Listen again here.

Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See

2009-09-09T10:58:01+00:00

Here's a lovely thing. A colleague pointed out that the producers of the excellent Last Chance to See TV series with Stephen Fry have dug out the original Douglas Adams radio series from 1989 and put all the episodes on their web site to listen to. A real treat.

Episode 1 of Last Chance to See, created by Mark Carwardine, who also created the original radio series, was on BBC 2 Sunday and, thanks to 'series catch-up', you've got two months to watch it.
The Last Chance to See radio programmes are here.
The picture shows Douglas Adams (left) and Mark Carwardine in a publicity shot for the radio programme that I found in the BBC's picture library, Elvis.