Breaking the News
Contents |
Host
Stand-in hosts:
Ray Bradshaw (30 July 2021)
Chris Forbes (18 November 2022)
Jay Lafferty (28 July 2023, 5 April and 19 July 2024)
Broadcast
BBC Radio Scotland, 5 June 2015 to present
also BBC Two Scotland, 30 November 2018 and BBC Scotland, 31 March 2019 to present (34 episodes in 3 series + 8 specials to date)
(see Trivia below)
Synopsis
Topical comedy panel show.
Regular rounds include:
Broken News, newsreaders talk about two topical stories, mashed up into one continuous flow of speech. What are the two stories, and can you make some amusing / witty / perspicacious comment about them?
A survey said... Two friends of the show give clues to a survey in the news, which sparks off another discussion.
Who's in the news a clip of a mystery person, and the object is to say who it is. And, if you can, something funny about them, or what they're talking about.
They often fill time with a fill in the blanks final round.
As one demands from BBC Scotland, there's a distinctly Scottish feel to the stories - questions are often about the stories important in Lochaber rather than London, and the inevitable sports question is about Scotland's magnificent 0-0 draw.
Trivia
The seventh episode of the eleventh series was tested out as a TV pilot for BBC Two Scotland on 30 November 2018 as part of the Funny Firsts season. The twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth series were broadcast on radio and TV on the newly launched BBC Scotland. These were essentially the same programme: it remained a radio show first and foremost, but the recordings were also filmed and broadcast on TV a few hours after the radio show went out. These programmes were next to nothing other than cameras shoved in the radio studio, complete with poor lighting and the occasional camera wobble; the budget did not even extend to an autocue, with the host reading from a piece of paper.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused the show to revert to radio-only; the 15th and 16th series had the guests contributing from home. Three TV specials appeared in 2021 (a look back at 2020 on New Year's Day, a Valentine's special in February, and a Euro 2020 edition on 17 June) but otherwise the show was once again mostly audio-only. End-of-Year TV specials have continued to be produced, and there were also in-vision editions for the BBC's centenary in 2022 and the Euro 2024 football tournament, whenever that was. The regular show returned to television in October 2024, strangely listed on the BBC website as "Series 14" which they'd already done four years earlier, but who's counting? Not the schedule-writers, anyhow...
Web links
British Comedy Guide entry (Radio)
British Comedy Guide entry (TV)
See also
Weaver's Week review (2024)
