Posted in: BBC, Preview, TV | Tagged: Hugh Dennis, Now Show, rory bremner, steve pugh

Rory Bremner Runs Through 26 Years For BBC Radio 4's Final Now Show

Rory Bremner will be running through 26 years on tonight's final The Now Show for BBC Radio 4 with Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis.

The Now Show is a radio topical comedy institution in the UK, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 which has been running since 1998, presented throughout by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. Who, even when they began, had a huge comedy reputation courtesy of the massively popular The Mary Whitehouse Experience in the early 1990s, making them the first comedians to play stadiums in the UK. Hugh Dennis has kept a television profile going since, in the likes of My Hero, Outnumbered, and Fleabag, while Steve has stuck more to radio. So you are inoculated as to how Hugh has aged since then… but not so much Steve.

A selection of guest comedy monologues, sketches, and songs have seen them through almost thirty years, but tonight's episode is the final roll of the dice. I was lucky to be invited as an audience member to the show last night. And for the final show, it was the return of an impressionist who has an even longer satirical legacy, Rory Bremner, singing for his supper (though not literally), with impressions including Boris Johnson, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Beckham, Bill Clinton, George Bush, David Cameron, Rishi Sunak, Donald Trump, Ant McPartlin, Jeremy Corbyn, Jacob Rhys Mogg, Nigel Farage, Michael Gove, Melvyn Bragg, and my all-time favourite of his, John Major, all in one sketch as they raced through the history of the world over the last 26 years, with a little help from Gemma Arrowsmith in six, seven, eight or nine minutes, depending which version makes the edit. And having to record different lead-ins for each as a result.

Despite its finality, it felt like your regular Now Show, and I guess that was partially the point. Go out, as they always went out, taking on the topical news of the week, if not making sense of it, then at least helping you stay sane. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss being an enemy of the deep state, "which is ironic given that's what she left the country in", was a great, quick gag to open with, and set the tone. This was business as usual, taking the piss as therapy rather than believing it could actually change things.

Guests Glen Moore gave a breathless, barrelling monologue without accounting for the day's significance; Harriet Kemsley looked at the joys of accidental divorce but was able to bring it down to the show ending because of irreconcilable differences between Punt and Dennis. But, for the last show, they did actually have a band, giving the musical stings some welly, and back up for final guest Jaz Emu, a song celebrating the nice things in life, such as people who walk slowly on pavements being euthenised, or website drop-down menus having some consistency over what this country is… "Is it Great Britain, or just Britain, or the United Kingdom, of the constituent countries" being the least likely line to be repeated ad infinitum, and thereby the funniest.

The Now Show became the first BBC comedy podcast, and has gained an international audience as a result, which also necessitated a few cuts. The radio audience will hear D Reams's Things Will Only Get Better at one point, and the podcast audience will just hear Hugh Dennis reading those words to save the Beeb a little money.

In a final look around the world suffering decades of  Trump and Biden, Putin and Xi Jinping, their diagnosis of the world's problems as old men staying in the same job for far too long, it was time for Punt and Dennis to bow out.

Maybe a little for me as well. Back in the mid-nineties, before The Now Show began, I used to write for the BBC Radio 4 show, Weekending, a then-long-running topical quiz show, at a time when one could just walk into BBC Radio House without any security whatsoever, and find your way to the writers' room on a Wednesday lunchtime, cheek by jowel with the likes of Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, Nev Fountain, Tom Jamieson, and Ivan Shakespeare. Walking into the building now is a very different affair with airport-style scanners and trays. I would later work as a radio advertising writer for the Soho agency Radioville, and worked a fair bit with Hugh Dennis, who directed radio ads. As a massive Mary Whitehouse Experience fan as a student, it was good training for suppressing my inner geek in social situations. Earlier this week, I met with a producer from those days and realise that I may still self-identify as a Radioville creative despite those seven years being fifteen years ago. Yesterday, watching the final Now Show. may have even helped me, psychologically, from moving on from those days a bit. Is closure too big a word? It's only seven letters.

Last night's jokes were much better. The Now Show is now "The Then Show." Or it will be after 7 pm GMT on BBC Radio 4 when the theme music fades away for the last time. The show will then be available on BBC Sounds, and recent past episodes can be found here.

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