Radio 2 Comfort FoodI hesitate to start this discussion but does anyone else have a secret hankering to hear again what I can only describe as the Radio 2 comfort food series of the seventies - such warhorses as the Law Game with Shaw Taylor or Popscore with Pete Murray?

I hesitate to start this discussion but does anyone else have a secret hankering to hear again what I can only describe as the Radio 2 comfort food series of the seventies - such warhorses as the Law Game with Shaw Taylor or Popscore with Pete Murray?

The many comedy-related series on around the same time (like Laughter in the Air and various programmes involving a comedian reminiscing) do get repeated on 7 from time to time but not these. Understand that I'm not claiming any particular merit for them (except that at least they're not the Grumbleweeds) but I remember them with a strange kind of fondness; their very predictability made them ideal bedtime listening and acted like a hot water bottle or an old pair of slippers. Anyone (gulp) agree?

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Afraid I can't remember it specifically but it sounds an ideal addition to the wishlist. Nostalgia was a major component of that slot: the It's A Funny Business interviews with comedians seemed to crop up continually, for example, although I never tired of listening to them. One detail which lingers from one of those programmes is Ray Allan's astonishment when, bottom of the bill on one of Laurel and Hardy's 1950s British tours and so in a tiny dressing room up a steep flight of stairs, one night Oliver Hardy came panting all the way up - to ask for his autograph.

Yes, it does fit that Sunday slot, although in an ideal world any comfort food repeats would be on weeknights at 10pm, reprocessed to suggest that boxy, warm medium wave sound and with a gradual, imperceptible fade built in for the last ten minutes as an aid to sleep. I recall a pretentious advert for a forgotten group called the Third Ear Band which encouraged somnolence (induced, one trusts, by natural causes) in the listener; the copy read something like "Do not worry about falling asleep, for the Third Ear Band sells dreams." These programmes ought to have the same soporific effect - minus, of course, the anxieties attendant on shelling out on expensive rare vinyl.

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Have just found a website with a Radio 2 timeline - you can scroll down year by year and see a list of the regular programmes and any comedy, etc series broadcast that year. I'd forgotten that the magic 10pm slot was originally 7pm but seems to have changed in 1981.

Find it here:

www.r2ok.co.uk/R2_ti...

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Listening to Barry Took on Comedy Controller just now he mentioned a programme he chaired called Sounds Familiar (later Looks Familiar on TV with Dennis Norden). Sounds like this would also be ideal fodder for this comfort food slot.

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Ah yes, bring 'em on. Maybe also The Impressionists when B Took was presenting though I think I realised even in the seventies that that was a bit ropey. And Took criticised the programme after he left only to be mocked as "a jaded post-Impressionist" by the then producer - which, I've got to say, showed a level of wit not always seen in the show.

And in the website alluded to earlier I saw that Little Ern had a programme on R2 called Wise on the Wireless, presumably post-Eric. (Not to be confused with David Hatch's Wireless Wise, which has been on BBC 7.) I'd love to hear that. One of the non-rude articles in that popular magazine Viz was a column supposedly written by Ernie Wise comparing different kinds of biscuits. Somehow it seemed entirely credible.

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Listening to Jonathan Ross on R2 earlier today both he and his producer were openly dismissive of the comedies at one ... when that kind of talk is heard on the preceding programme on the same station it's not good, is it?

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Ah, I didn't know that. Of course all he needs to do is flash his cash at them ... Loadsofmoney!

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It's also an odd slot, Radio 2 Saturday lunchtime rather than late night - who is the audience? Maybe that's why the slot has had so many clip compilations in the past by Arthur Smith and others: bit of something for everyone, not particularly good or bad.

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Yes, I also like many of the specialist music programmes and documentaries on R2 but it's clear that comedies and shows of the "comfort food" variety no longer have a place on the station. I'm glad that Russell Davies is still around even if the evening slot might be seen as a demotion. It's also difficult to imagine Huddlines coming back to R 2 with its allusions to Gert and Daisy etc ("Who?").

And what you say also helps explain the current threads here about disliking the Goons etc - BBC 7 is serving its audience with a range of comedies spanning over five decades; small wonder that not all of it connects. And who is BBC 7's audience anyway?

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The joy of 7 is in the unexpected programmes: a Max Bygraves show from the fifties broadcast a year or two ago which turned out to be unexpectedly good, then hearing the reason why: Eric Sykes credited as the writer at the end. Or that unusual Goon Show without an audience heard recently.

I only hope that over time this station doesn't develop a narrow view of its demographic and start filtering out older shows. Even when stuff isn't very good it's somehow important to hear it occasionally, if only to provide a context for the more successful programmes of the time. Milligan was not above mocking his rivals as this approximately remembered Goon Show sequence indicates:

Soldier, why did you desert your post?
It had woodworm in it.
Old jokes won't save you!
Why not? They saved Monkhouse and Goodwin.

There is, however, a separate issue of how often certain shows ought to be repeated. It's undoubtedly the case that The Goon Show and Round the Horne (and its predecessor and successor) are on a great deal - is this a creative decision about their importance to radio comedy or is it about (or also about) their availability / cost?