Laugh at your radio this sunday evening…

I am a big fan of Radio 4 comedy.

Not all of it. Having not gone to a public school or Oxbridge, a lot of the revue sounding stuff feels very ‘in’ and pleased with itself and largely leaves me cold.

But when Radio 4 comedy is good – it is very good indeed – even when it’s trendy, holier-than-thou lefty nonsense like the News Quiz with the  peerless Sandi Toksvig at the helm.

The Goons. Round the Horn. That was the week that was. The Two Ronnies. Radio Active. Little Britain and dare-I-say-it, The small world of Dom… no I shouldn’t…

But this Sunday at 7.15 on BBC R4 – adding to the annals of Radio comedy classics is HAL – a sitcom starring the ‘going to be huge’ Hal Cruttenden. Four episodes, written by Hal and yours truly, mainly featuring… er, Hal and why not?

It is a funny show.

And I can say this with some confidence and even conviction – because Hal is a very funny man and the show’s two writers must be funny because they both make their living by making people laugh out loud and not smiling – which is an excellent starting place for a radio comedy worth listening to.

And don’t just take my word for it.

This is what Jane Anderson wrote in todays Radio Times.

Hal  7-15pm Radio 4

“Hal Cruttenden is unashamedly middle-class, which makes his humour a perfect match for Radio 4. There’s even a telling reference to this in his new sitcom about a stay-at-home dad, where he advises his children that while being middle-class is definitely ‘the best’, they should not tell their school chums because it will make them sound vulgar. It’s tough to make an impact in the first episode of a new sitcom, but I laughed out loud, several times, and the supporting cast, including Ed Byrne and Ronni Ancona, is top-notch.”

Thank you Jane.

Well said – albeit there is one cast member (Doug) you haven’t flagged up and might well have done!

So do tune in and I hope that you enjoy it – and just to clarify, when I said earlier in this post that Hal is ‘going to be huge’ – I meant in a comedic sense of the word as well as his girth which I’m afraid looks set to be only gong one way.

All shares, tweets and likes gratefully received.

And I make no apologies for posting regularly about this series – because with the cost of commuting and the amount of times that the writers met against what we got paid, it means that this first series has actually been conceived and written at a loss.