Comedy of the Week

BBC Radio 4
Comedy of the Week

Brighten your week with the latest BBC Radio 4 comedy.

Episodes

  1. 25 NOV

    Best Medicine

    Joining Kiri Pritchard-McLean this week is comedian Daliso Chaponda who champions Denial as the best medicine (or does he?). Urology Consultant Mr Bob Yang explains how a pineapple-flavoured UTI vaccine is changing lives, Dr Dana Damian takes Kiri on a journey through the body with tiny swallowable Origami Surgical Robots, and paramedic Thomas Martin teaches Kiri how to stay alive with Defibrillators. And the panel hear from David, one of the few people in the world who can claim he was brought back from clinical death with a defibrillator - and has also watched the whole incident on video. Best Medicine is your weekly dose of laughter, hope and incredible medicine. Award-winning comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean is joined by a funny and fascinating panel of comedians, doctors, scientists, and historians to celebrate medicine’s inspiring past, present and future. Each week Kiri challenges a panel of medical experts and a comedian to make a case for what they think is 'the best medicine', and each guest champions anything from world-changing science or an obscure invention, to an every-day treatment, an uplifting worldview, an unsung hero or a futuristic cure. Whether it’s origami surgical robots, life-changing pineapple UTI vaccines, Victorian scandal mags, denial, sleep, tiny beating organoid hearts, lifesaving stem cell transplants, gold poo donors or even crying - it’s always something worth celebrating. Hosted by Kiri Pritchard-McLean Featuring: Daliso Chaponda, Dr Dana Damian, Thomas Martin and Mr Bob Yang Written by Mel Owen, Pravanya Pillay, Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Ben Rowse Producers: Tashi Radha and Ben Worsfield Theme tune composed by Andrew Jones A Large Time production for BBC Radio 4

    29 min
  2. 21 OCT

    Janey Godley: The C Bomb

    This show was first broadcast in June 2023, as Janey faced a terminal cancer diagnosis. Last week, Janey revealed she is now receiving end-of-life care. This is another chance to hear Janey's powerful personal story of strength and survival, all told in her brutally honest, brutally funny signature style. In this episode, Janey does what she’s always done: turning her own dark and difficult experiences into laugher, as she paints a vivid picture of life in the East End of Glasgow in the 60s, and recounts a childhood steeped in poverty and abuse. As she faces her own mortality, she and daughter Ashley Storrie talk, laugh and cry as they unpick some of the experiences she shares onstage. Relentlessly authentic, she's also had to face up to her own mistakes - taking responsibility and apologising both publicly and onstage, as well as sharing the shame of being ‘cancelled’ and the very dark place that took her to. Then, just months later…. the hand grenade of a cancer diagnosis forced her to start fighting for her life. Now, after finally admitting that after everything she’s been through in life, maybe she‘s not “fine”, and with a terminal diagnosis, she’s submitted to the ultimate ‘C bomb' for many men and women of her generation - counselling. And as a result of this insight, she’s more hilarious and compelling onstage than ever. Janey’s experienced a life of extremes but has come out the other side with rare insight, still able to make light of all its trials and tribulations in her signature dark and uncompromising style. Recorded live in front of an audience in her hometown, Glasgow. A Dabster production for BBC Radio 4

    29 min

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Brighten your week with the latest BBC Radio 4 comedy.

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