ALL RIGHT, Prof Aubrey Manning of Edinburgh University and your so clever Sound of Life series (Mondays, Radio 4, 9pm), tell us what this sound is: Chomp. Ouch. Chomp, chomp. Oogh, aagh.
Chomp, chomp chomp. Can I have a glass of water, please?
Give up? I’m not surprised, since I made it up. It’s the sound of a BBC television executive eating his (or her, or quite possibly its) liver. And why? Because BBC One’s crazy decision to play fast and loose with the scheduling (now you saw it, now you could see it at another time and probably another space entirely) of Andy Hamilton’s new sitcom set in a sports agency, Trevor’s World of Sport, led one of Britain’s best and most consistent comic talents to hie himself, his idea, his jokes and his cast off to a medium where he was better appreciated for the second series. So that’ll be radio, then.
Actually, I don’t know why Hamilton didn’t take it to radio in the first place. Yes, it’s nice having a helicopter bring you in from your country retreat for a swift rewrite on filming day, and slap-up catered lunches are de rigueur in TV land. But if God had meant us to fly he wouldn’t have given us taxis, and just think of the unforced proletarian humour you can pick up while queueing in Prêt à Manger. No, Andy, face it, mate — you’re better off where you are.
And so is Trevor Heslop, the only honest man in the devious world of sports agency. For one thing he is being played on radio, as on TV, by Neil Pearson, who probably relishes the chance to sit on a stool in a studio with his feet up and just read out clever lines, rather than hang about for hours in make-up waiting to be picked up. In a mini-van. And taken to the location. (It’s easy, this comedy lark. You just put full-stops into an otherwise totally innocuous line and wait for the laughs.)
Advertisement
And with Pearson has come the rest of the comedy crew — Paul Reynolds as Sammy, the unscrupulous devil to Trevor’s angel; Rosalind Ayres as Theresa, Trevor’s Born-Again PA; and Cosima Shaw as Heidrun, the intellectual German lesbian receptionist. (Actually, to tell you the truth, Andy, neither the German nor lesbian bit really carries the character on much. Men perving over lesbians for comedic effect went out with Joey of Friends, and the rest of the cast keep on having to refer to Heidrun being German or else we’d miss it, here on the other side of the microphone.)
Episode one of the new series, though (last Friday at 6.30pm — the Rolls-Royce of Radio 4 comedy slots), made good use of John Humphrys doing his rottweiler bit, supposedly putting it to Trevor that, being a sports agent, he was by definition a scoundrel, only for it to be revealed as a recurrent dream when Humphrys’s voice started coming out of Jennifer Lopez’s face, which was set on top of Jennifer Lopez’s body. That’s the booty of radio.
Another attractive feature is the way in which the lines come through without actors getting in the way. He is a listener’s writer, not an actor’s one. For all the years in comedy Hamilton’s best character is still himself. The News Quiz is always improved by him being self-deprecating in his dry little Anthony Worrall-Thompson voice (in World of Sport Paul Reynolds does the Hamilton voice, and very well too).
And he’s a great reporter. He gets the facts, and serves them up as fiction. Why, in last Friday’s episode he summed up the curious relationship between agency, club and football player better than any undercover reporter could do in a month of filming people’s knees with a camera hidden in an attaché case.