Worse was their adoption of the mighty art of the Forced Fluff, largely indectable from the script due to the fact that the cock-ups were far funnier and more natural. Was this some self-defence mechanism with the cast knowing that they were fighting a losing battle and deciding to ride the fluffs so as to cover them up? The prime example followed an horrendous pun from Boothby, "what is in the post is not in the present", which deservedly got no laughs whatsoever. After carrying on regardless and yet another whistling hand over his head, Stephen Frost butts in with "I've only just got that!" and virtually has a coronary. Like he hadn't had it explained to him in rehearsals.

Most beguiling of all is Big Al, a mysterious bloke whom Boothby discovered whilst off his face during the Edinburgh Fringe. He suggested it would be a great idea for this Scotsman to appear in his new show, travel down to London once a week for this thrilling purpose and emit a couple of lines that any fucker could do. In fact this is the total of his character, suggesting a complete blag based on a crap idea Boothby had one hazy evening. Pick of the Binge if you like.

The special guest tonight was Robyn Hitchcock, a relatively obscure singer/songwriter who is currently doing a spot of touring and media work over here. I make no bones about this being the only attraction for me to come to the show and Boothby is known to be a fan as well. When he performs the song 'Uncorrected Personality Traits' during the first show BG paces behind him, cackling as though he hasn't heard the song a million times before. If he really does think he's that great then why the hell was he depending on his agent to *remind* him about a support slot for Robyn in Camden a week earlier? He failed to show. Too many late nights or sycophancy on tap?

Robyn is hardly adept to comedy. Whereas he can zoom off into a long and very funny monologue on stage, scripted comedy is a completely different animal. (He appears in 'The Jerry Atrick Show'(C5) this Sunday so take a look for yourself.) When asked to contribute to a sketch Robyn fouls up every line, loses the rhythm of the dialogue and squints at the script as though it's an alien language. This is incredibly funny, as a bald act of messing up the recording. Shame then that he's encased in a dreadful routine with Eldon and Graffoe over thinking he's Alfred Hitchcock, the dead director. Boothby ought to be shot for something that lame.

Especially since he knows that Robyn towers above him as a performer. Brilliant with verbiage and the comic lyric, halfway between Syd Barrett and Bob Dylan stylistically and earthing all of this with a fluid performance style, his song gripped the whole of the audience unlike anything in the script. With lines like "Even Marilyn Monroe was a man/But this tends to get overlooked/By our mother-fixated/Overweight, sexist media" Boothby should be embarassed, not ebullient.

Robyn's song throws up a curious parallel too. It was written in 1983 during a period of personal reconciliation, following his years with The Soft Boys and a stilted attempt at a solo career. During the late-Seventies The Soft Boys were one of the most vilified groups in the music press, whereas the more acceptable art-rock groups This Heat and The Pop Group were toasted for each new release. SB were an unstable group, strung out on acid for most of their existence. Robyn eventually cabbaged, retired for two years and wrote sporadic songs for Captain Sensible of all people.

Now, unless you actually buy into Bill Hicks' jaded and monochromatic philosophy you will be fully aware that for every drug-induced artistic triumph there is a Captain Sensible album trundling behind, unsteady on it's feet. Likewise, Boothby Graffoe's show is the 'Women and Captain First' of current comedy - full of overworked stabs at surrealism, written and patched together at the last minute (which becomes a joke within the script just in case anyone spots it) and stretching anaemic post-modernism to such a degree that you can taste a comedy sound effect of an elastic band heading your way.

What you can also hear is a precocious and repeated slamming of the door, with Boothby running off into his little corner of the world where 'The Big Booth 2' really is construed as groundbreaking stuff. He's probably there right now, lighting a spliff and slapping 'The Clangers' omnibus into the VCR. Not a care in the world because the cheque is in the post and he's managed to cheat the BBC and it's audience into believing that he spent more than a modicum of time preparing the script. Closer to the truth is the image of a Perrier nominee writing hurriedly to a deadline, giving up at 4am with an "oh fuck it" and not so much as a by your leave for completion. Fill the duration out with some long drawn out guitar dirge and no one will ever know.

And wow - what guitar dirge! I've left him alone until now, but having to sit through what was ostensibly a finished show and then receive five minutes of bland sonic attack from a dreary fret-wanker with a s

And wow - what guitar dirge! I've left him alone until now, but having to sit through what was ostensibly a finished show and then receive five minutes of bland sonic attack from a dreary fret-wanker with a slight moustache - who also has the nerve to be called Antonio Fortioni (for fuck's sake) - purely to cover up a gaping hole in the script sure takes some beating. I'll file away that ISIHAC recording I went to a fortnight ago in Coventry and try to forget it was made by the same station, shall I? Fuck off. I'll go back for the next series and enjoy Cryer, Garden, Brooke-Taylor and Lyttleton delivering puns with conviction and not contempt.

Lucy Armitage, another useless radio producer, came on at the end of the recording to wake us up and beg us all to join them for next week's show. Rather unprofessionally she commented on the lack of attendance this week by saying "I'm getting bollocked for it" *in front* of the audience, as though that's going to help. If she had any sense amidst her post-goth hairdo a brief word to the cast beforehand would have ensured a few hints dropped, a few careful persuasions for us to come along and enjoy free masochism. I dunno. Perhaps the cast were all in the bog.

Monday's recording will be signed for the deaf (which is only ever entertaining when someone swears) and special guests will be Rich Hall - another comic who can't get arrested in America - and, lordy, Ms Mariella Frostrup. If you're very lucky you may even get the chance to see Lucy kicked in the stomach by a managing director until she coughs up blood, tearing up her pension plan as he walks away, and some minions dragging her corpse away to the special room. Boothby will almost certainly roll his eyes, gurn at the audience and nick a couple of lines off of Harry Hill. Damn, another drugs reference. Still not as many as there were in the show.

'The Big Booth 2' was hateful radio made by people who hate radio. Give it an extremely wide berth.

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The Radio 1 producer sounds like a typically ignorant careerist notalent. Her "he's just mad" dismissal of Morris is infuriating. It's the easiest form of self-promoting lazy
reference in existence in the media at the moment. The implication would seem to be that he was a barking psychotic, whereas it was good old researcher girl who held the whole thing together ha ha ha aren't I highly
skilled Mr. Potential Employer. From various accounts given by people who've actually met him, Morris certainly doesn't seem mad. Fact of the matter is that truly 'mad' artistic people seldom manage to realise their grand visions(Brian Wilson being a particularly strong example). Morris has completed every
ambitious project he has ever started. I sincerely doubt that this characteristic could be applied to her.

Her rubbishing of "Soundbite" is equally maddening. It was one of the finest Radio 1 programmes of the 1990s, and how anyone could describe it as "indulgent" is beyond me. The fact that she then went on to dismiss Peel and Lewis-Smith underlines it for me - she is one of the horrendous breed of people who don't like anyone with an ounce of creativity or individuality, as they have a tendency to get in the way of
their pathetic careerist goals. Nothing new of course - Spike Milligan and The Goodies have both told similar tales - but all the same an attitude we could well do without. The flippant "times have changed" reaction to what appears to have been a genuine and honest question about the lack of comedy on Radio 1 shows her idioticy up even further. I have always had a theory about the demise of comedy, documentary and specialist programming on Radio 1. They all seemed
to happen around the same time - somewhere in the late summer of 1997, when I also seem to recall hearing something about somebody famous or other who had an unfortunate incident with a car and a tunnel. As Mark Radcliffe has remarked many times, even though "regular programming" returned to Radio 1 in theory within a couple of days, the actual genuine regular programming(ie shows being where they were and presented by who they were before the Queen Of Hearts' blueflash roadmash) took a lot longer, and then most of them were promptly dumped. Could it be that certain career-motivated
talentless idiots took the opportunity of the Diana-enforced good programming hiatus to seize control of Radio 1 and shape it into "their" vision? That's what I've always suspected, anyway.

Yeah, I'll bet Clare thought her work on Morris and Soundbite was that bad that she probably didn't bother putting it on her cv. Clearly.

Much as I loved/love Blue Jam, it's really pretty obvious that it only got commissioned by Radio 1 not for its comedic content, but so it could be marketed as comedown bollocks for the Fabio & Grooverider set/or the look at me I'm just so out of it brigade. There is no place for comedy on Radio 1 anymore - the fact that Mark & Lard are still entertaining even while surrounded by a largely cretinous playlist and less and less time for speech content is little short of miraculous.

Any kind of serious analysis of music has been shown the door sharpish too. Isn't it strange that Radio 1 - given such a rough ride by the mass media during its golden period of 89-95 - is now regarded as a rip-roaring success even though it is now a screamingly dreadful station. Most of its daytime presenters are shocking.

And yet, none of this matters, does it? Of course not. Radio 1 is bollocks now, but at least it's cool bollocks. So that's fine. None of that embarrassment of DLT on Sunday mornings, Simon Bates, Gary Davies. Thank Christ they've gone - only to be replaced by Chris Moyles, Sara Cox, Jo Whiley, Dave Fucking Pearce.

How the hell would Victor Lewis Smith be scheduled now? With those brilliant Early Music parodies, or Take 6 interludes?

Maybe Radio 2 will start to clean up now. Certainly Jack Docherty's show, while no masterpiece, pisses over most examples of zoo radio. Who knows, maybe they'll buy up Danny Baker next.

What Dingwall's Ampersand's posting makes very clear is that radio comedy (if it is to be made at all in this day and age) has to be cool in that saying nothing sort of way. The programme sounds a shambles.

>Monday's recording will be signed for the deaf (which is only ever entertaining when someone swears) and special guests will be Rich Hall - another comic who can't get arrested in America - and, lordy, Ms Mariella Frostrup.

I was at the recording of Big Booth 2 and didn't they say that they only asked Mariella Frostrup for a joke? I thought at the time that it was a pity she never gave them one. Though I'm glad to see BBC Radio at last doing something for their many deaf listeners.

David

>Maybe Radio 2 will start to clean up now. Certainly Jack Docherty's show, while no masterpiece, pisses over most examples of zoo radio. Who knows, maybe they'll buy up Danny Baker next.

I think you've got something there, Justin. Radio 1 in the DLT eighties heyday appealed to a huge age range, while most of R2's audience was over 50. Now it's the other way round, with R1 left for the kids and R2 grabbing a wider and wider audience (it's the most listened station in the UK, you know)

Oh dear... a Boothby thread been up for a whole day and no RHC... Guess she really is gone... shame.

>Oh dear... a Boothby thread been up for a whole day and no RHC... Guess she really is gone... shame.

I was assuming that the long, shrill squeal of defeat from 'guess who hasn't gone yet' was the pubeless wonder in question disappearing into infinity, all her dreams in ruins, all her aspirations vanquished..

I hate kids.

I ate kids.

Though that "aaaargh" messed up the forum formatting no end.

No. No way. The best thread to appear on the forum in an absolute ice age is not being allowed to just slide unnoticed into old topics. Reignite the debate.