John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme

[DrGreggles]

New series started tonight.

Couldn't find an existing thread.
Good innit.

[Consignia]

Listened to it while running yesterday. Good, but nothing special for finnermore. I'm sure the "since you asked me" could have been a repeat from a previous series. And the return of the awful comedy songs.

Still, the lasagna sketch had me had to stop running because I was chuckling so much. Always great to have more finnermore.

[idunnosomename]

I thought this was the first time I could really see the formulas showing and it didn't seem very funny. And I like a lot of his songs (RED TROUSERS!) but this one was... why did it need to be a song?

Ed Reardon is still on top form though imo tho

[Janie Jones]

I thought this was the first time I could really see the formulas showing ...

Hmm, that's a good point because although I didn't think it in those words, I kind of felt the same.

Still better than almost anything else on BBC radio.

Aren't the comedy songs foisted on the writers? Like when The Young Ones had to have a musical interval in order to be Light Entertainment rather than Comedy because of accessing budgets? Dunno, just wondered, as they are so weak.

I'll never get tired of Ed Reardon

[Johnny Yesno]

Thanks for the headsup, DG. The catastrophe that is BBC Sounds neglected to notify me.

[idunnosomename]

Good jabs at BBC Sounds in Ed Reardon this evening too, incidentally

[idunnosomename]

Tonight's was a lot better. I felt surprised a bit more. The formula of "People talking - You get it's about a historical thing familiar to Radio 4 listeners - the absurdity is explored - there's a punchline" was subverted much better than last week. And a much funnier and sillier Since You Asked Me.

That said I also loved the silliness of Ed Reardon having a go at the heritage industry and volunteers yesterday. There's still some excellent stuff on Radio 4 among the dross, you know.

[Crabwalk]

Hmmm. Time for a new format for John I think. This series has felt pretty tired and overfamiliar so far. And Adam Buxton's incredible Ira Glass parody has left poor John's in episode 3 sounding terrible.

[metaltax]

I might be Mandela-Effecting this but wasn't the "taxi driver talks to comedy writer" bit from this week's re-used from That Mitchell & Webb Sound?

[Andy147]

I might be Mandela-Effecting this but wasn't the "taxi driver talks to comedy writer" bit from this week's re-used from That Mitchell & Webb Sound?

Closest thing to that in M&W Sound that I can think of off the top of my head is the bit when a fan (played by James Bachman) tells David Mitchell (as himself) that they should do more of the "cash register shop" sketch (that's in the same episode), eventually suggesting they re-do it as a "doorbell shop" sketch.

[mothman]

This is really weird.

http://liverampup.com/entertainment/john-finnemore-married-partner-gay.html

So I was looking on GIS for a photo of JF, and one of the results I got linked to the page above, which excitedly explains that he's married and therefore isn't gay (note: I've no idea about his personal life, never occurred to me before to think about it). It reads like something generated by a computer. It's presumably clickbait of some kind. And, as is quite obvious, the person called "John Finnemore" who's married to somebody called Hannah quite patently ISN'T the JF we're discussing here.  I just don't get it at all.

[gilbertharding]

That is an AMAZING piece of writing: 'Dodge the swirling gay rumours...' and all the detail about the privacy settings of his wife's instagram.

Someone with a twitter profile should direct him towards it (assuming he's not aware of it already... assuming he didn't actually write it...)

[mothman]

I follow him on Twitter but I'm not sure I'd want to. For one thing, I'm not sure how much he actually engages with people on the platform.

It all just feels rather tacky and sordid. Though it might well be a joke. A joke... based on the fact that there's somebody else with the same name who we know is married while we don't know if "our" one is? As I say, very odd.

[olliebean]

Rumours about his sexuality (if indeed there are any; I haven't heard them) were probably fed by this:

In September 2011, Finnemore wrote a pilot episode for BBC One called George and Bernard Shaw, a sitcom starring Robert Lindsay and Richard Griffiths as an elderly gay couple. The show was not picked up for a full series.

An idea which ITV seems to have stolen a couple of years later.

[rectorofstiffkey]

This is really weird.

http://liverampup.com/entertainment/john-finnemore-married-partner-gay.html

So I was looking on GIS for a photo of JF, and one of the results I got linked to the page above, which excitedly explains that he's married and therefore isn't gay (note: I've no idea about his personal life, never occurred to me before to think about it). It reads like something generated by a computer. It's presumably clickbait of some kind. And, as is quite obvious, the person called "John Finnemore" who's married to somebody called Hannah quite patently ISN'T the JF we're discussing here.  I just don't get it at all.

That website is the weirdest... I've seen it in the past when looking for other stuff, it's all oddly-written articles about whether someone is married/dating/gay.  It's hard to describe the writing style but it's a bit like if you imagine Heat magazine translated into Japanese and then back into English?  I assume it's just designed to come up as a good hit when people search for if someone's married or gay.

Love this piece of literature about Stephen Mulhern:

'Britain's Got More Talent' presenter, and magician Stephen Mulhern is a good looking London man with several women gunning for his heart. Those ladies might get beatific when they get to know that Stephen is neither married nor taken by anyone till this date!

Well, 'single' is what his relationship status speaks of him now, but does this mean that he is on the gay side and butters the other side of the toast?

My toast has butter on only one side, but I do have jam.  I'm clearly filthy.

[shh]

Well it's no secret he keeps a toasting fork in the billiard parlour...

There's an account of his touchingly inept attempt to woo a polish girl in a bbc radio interview, I think to do with teenage diaries.

Anyway, I think the sketch programme has always been a bit patchy, his narrative projects always feel a lot more painstaking. I imagine they both pay a pittance. From what I can gather from a quick look, radio 4 pays ~11k/episode vs 200k+ for telly.

[gabrielconroy]

"Contact

TNT Building, Tinkune Kathmandu, Nepal"

It seems to have been written by someone who has a taste for the repetition of florid imagery fuelled by several thesauruses, and whose first language is not English. And possibly not of this earth, either. DODGE THE SWIRLING GAY RUMOURS

[Consignia]

This latest episode really did feel like finnermore has run out of ideas. How many of the "since your asked me" segments are retreads? He really needs a new format.

[olliebean]

Or just give him a TV series so he can redo all his best sketches from the radio for an audience that mostly hasn't heard them before. You know, like they did with Mitchell and Webb.

[mothman]

After eight series, you's think they'd have tried that by now.

I wonder if they ever considered a Cabin Pressure TV series - or might have, if not for one of the cast inadvertently becoming a global superstar during its run?

[metaltax]

Nah, it'd just spoil it (both Souvenir Programme and Cabin Pressure), at least for existing fans. There wasn't a sketch in the M&W TV series where the delivery was better than the originals.

I know its a cliché but the pictures are better on radio. I don't want to see someone else's idea of what The Travelling Lemon looks like. There's as much value in Roger Allam's timing as there is in the words he speaks; TV would need him to make a "comedy" face and I think that'd ruin it.

[Andy147]

He adapted a Cabin Pressure script (Ipswich) for a TV pilot that was never made.

In this interview he says "I would love to do the show on TV, but no-one wants sketch shows at the moment. I imagine they'll come back into fashion eventually."

On YouTube "ben pics" has animated some JFSP sketches, e.g. "Kirates", which gives some idea of how that might work on TV.

[Johnny Yesno]

That website is the weirdest... I've seen it in the past when looking for other stuff, it's all oddly-written articles about whether someone is married/dating/gay.  It's hard to describe the writing style but it's a bit like if you imagine Heat magazine translated into Japanese and then back into English?  I assume it's just designed to come up as a good hit when people search for if someone's married or gay.

Love this piece of literature about Stephen Mulhern:

'Britain's Got More Talent' presenter, and magician Stephen Mulhern is a good looking London man with several women gunning for his heart. Those ladies might get beatific when they get to know that Stephen is neither married nor taken by anyone till this date!

Well, 'single' is what his relationship status speaks of him now, but does this mean that he is on the gay side and butters the other side of the toast?

My toast has butter on only one side, but I do have jam.  I'm clearly filthy.

Perhaps it was written by the Talk to Transformer website.

Since your asked me whether I am gay or not, I am straight. I am attracted to men that I'm familiar with. I enjoy it. There are many men. There are many guys.

We all have sexual fetishes which we enjoy and that can make us gay. I love and am attracted to straight men. I do not have any gay inclinations and I have a positive relationship with them and they give me pleasure and a sexual release through their physical actions in a sexual way. It is about the same with myself at this moment. I am attracted to my wife in addition to my gay inclinations. I also love my son and I do not have a negative relationship with either.

I find what people call 'femininity', that there's a lot of emphasis on it, in the western world but in India in particular and there are women that come in there who are very confident in themselves. Some are very, very confident about their feminine characteristics. Some women are very feminine. Some are more masculine. I find some women much more assertive than others. Some have strong opinions about things.

I don't feel that men or women are made out to be equal, or that all women in the world are equal. I think it's the same in every society of every society, and some men are stronger than others.

Do you want to speak more

[mothman]

Nah, it'd just spoil it (both Souvenir Programme and Cabin Pressure), at least for existing fans. There wasn't a sketch in the M&W TV series where the delivery was better than the originals.

I know its a cliché but the pictures are better on radio. I don't want to see someone else's idea of what The Travelling Lemon looks like. There's as much value in Roger Allam's timing as there is in the words he speaks; TV would need him to make a "comedy" face and I think that'd ruin it.

I agree. But at least we get to see the rules of Yellow Car.