Radio 2 s Festival Of Funny pilots
The Delightful Sausage On: Staycations (
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Radio 2 has an odd relationship with comedy, chucking out the odd programme now and then to a listenership not really expecting to find it.
Last night, sandwiched between Johnnie Walker’s rock show and Craig Charles’s funk party, came a couple of pilots under the BBC’s Festival Of Funny banner, courtesy of the Delightful Sausage comedy duo and stand-up Tommy Tiernan.
Yorkshire’s premier double act with ‘charming Northern vowels , as they billed themselves, offered their version of a low-budget holiday show in their guide to UK ‘staycations’ - another nail in the coffin for the word’s original meaning of remaining at home.
The week s best comedy on TV and radio
The week’s best comedy on TV and radio.
Sunday March 7
FUNNY FESTIVAL LIVE: This new stand-up showcase is being stripped across the week every night until Thursday. Tonight’s comedians are Jason Manford, Judi Love, Toussaint Douglass, Michael Stranney and Jayde Adams.
BBC Two, 9.45pm
FESTIVAL OF FUNNY: In the first of two comedy pilots, Kiri Pritchard-McLean explores all the things she’s missed while living in isolation, using audience stories to help recall the awkward moments of life that we so weirdly want back. The second show, The Empire, is set in Imperial India, where the new district magistrate of Darjeeling grapples with the responsibilities of his new post with the help - and sometimes hindrance - of his colleagues. The cast features Stephen Fry, Alexander Owen Rasika Dugal, Michelle Gomez and Arnuvab Pal - the stand-up who also wrote the script.
Cambridge-educated satirist also edited National Lampoon and launched Spitting Image
Tony Hendra, the veteran comedy writer who played Spinal Tap’s manager Ian Faith in the 1984 rock mockumentary, has died at the age of 79.
His wife, Carla Meisner, told the New York Times the cause of death was motor neurone disease.
Born in Willesden, North London, Hendra was educated at St Albans School where he was a classmate of Stephen Hawking, and then Cambridge. At university, he joined the Footlights and was part of the 1962 revue alongside John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
He moved to the US and became a television writer and in 1970 he joined the newly formed National Lampoon magazine, becoming managing editor the following year and staying there for a decade.