This week’s Podcast of the Week is, rather bizarrely, a twofer. It’s a shared podcast – half the time it’s The Now Show, the other half it is The News Quiz – just to keep you on your toes. It all depends on which season is currently running.
Either way, it’s an excellent podcast to subscribe to if you want to see what the best of Radio 4 Comedy has to offer.
The Now Show portion of the podcast is hosted by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis, and has a stand-up comedy format based on the current affairs of the week. It’s amusing, but I do find that it can be a little variable, depending on the particular guest comics that week. It has a tendency to try a little too hard. However, when it’s good, it’s very very good so still well worth the listen.
At the moment, however, we are being graced with The News Quiz. Hosted by Sandi Toksvig, it’s ostensively a quiz show where panelists have to guess the current news story given some rather cryptic clues. In practise, scoring is completely arbitrary and it’s just an excuse for the very best of cutting wit and irreverent humour. Add to that, unintentionally funny press cuttings from around the country read in a completely deadpan voice by Radio 4 newsreaders and you pretty much have the perfect comedy show.
WARNING: do not attempt to listen on a personal mp3 player while travelling on public transport. Other passengers will think you completely utterly insane as you burst into hysterical laughter every few minutes.
The podcast is released weekly (on a Friday, funnily enough, as you may have guessed from the title) and is around half an hour long.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Lisa // 12th May 2008 at 2:02 pm
Yay! One of my favourites. Now if somebody could just explain why R4 wilfully doesn’t podcast the equivalent on a Monday?
2 Bowch // 12th May 2008 at 2:22 pm
I have to admit I’m also a huge fan of the Friday Night Comedy podcast. I’m more of a fan of the News Quiz than the Now Show but I do enjoy both.
3 Clair // 12th May 2008 at 10:38 pm
I prefer the Now Show to the News Quiz, but again, I enjoy both too.
4 Colin Brooks // 13th May 2008 at 2:03 am
Thanks for the tip. I am not that much into podcasts but it looks like you are trying to get me addicted. :P
I’ve just subscribed to this one. :)
Cheers!
5 Pewari // 13th May 2008 at 9:22 am
Lisa: I know – I really want to hear the Monday night shows as well. Wish they’d hurry up and put all they produce into podcast form, I never remember to listen to the actual broadcast, nor visit the “listen again”.
Colin: who me? *looks innocent* (bwahahahahaha)
6 Kathy // 9th Jun 2008 at 12:22 am
I stumbled on the Newz Quiz podcast on iTunes and just loved it. Now I would love to download all the available episodes of this program, but unfortunately when I did a google search on it, all the sites connect back to the BBC site, which only holds the podcast for 1 week. So none of the older episodes links works. Can somebody tell me where I can get the past episode of this program?
7 Flick // 15th Mar 2009 at 10:27 pm
I know this is an old post, but as a big fan of The News Quiz, I’m a little sad that this season has ended. I’m sure The Now Show is great too, but The News Quiz is something really special and seriously funny!
Great introduction to the programme though in this blog! :)
p/s: Just wanted to say that I naively loaded the mp3 onto my personal player. Needless to say I got quite a lot of ‘personal space’ around me on the tube after I accidentally burst out laughing.
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