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)
