Showing results by narrator "John O'Farrell" in All Categories

The Write Stuff is the book-based panel show that takes a witty and whimsical look at well-known authors and their work. Host James Walton challenges the erudite contestants with tricky literary teasers, which they endeavour to answer using a combination of knowledge and guesswork.

Following his hugely popular account of the previous 2000 years, John O'Farrell now comes bang up to date with a hilarious modern history asking 'How the hell did we end up here?' An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain informs, elucidates and laughs at all the bizarre events, ridiculous characters and stupid decisions that have shaped Britain's story since 1945; leaving the Twenty-First Century reader feeling fantastically smug for having the benefit of hindsight.

Gyles Brandreth presents the quiz show with scandal on its mind. Hosted by the least discreet man in Britain, broadcaster and national treasure Gyles Brandreth, Whispers is the panel game that celebrates all things scurrilous and salacious. Running the gauntlet of gossip are two teams of two guests, who test their wits and wit as they try to tell the difference between fact, fiction and outlandish speculation.

Originally broadcast on Radio 4 in 2003-4, We’ve Been Here Before is the topical, satirical, historical panel game that aims to show beyond all doubt that there’s nothing new in the news. Hosted by award-winning comedian, broadcaster and Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Clive Anderson, it takes a wry, witty look at long-gone days through a present-day lens, as the panellists battle it out to discover who’s got the best memory for detail when it comes to raking up the past.

First broadcast (with the aid of a crystal ball) in summer 1994, the Sony Award-winning show returns for a second series starring the ‘Godfather of Radio 4’, Brian Perkins, and Spitting Image impressionist Kate Robbins. This time, they turn their comic gaze on six roller-coaster years from the 21st Century: 2001, 2005, 2010, 2021, 2025 and 2099.

Things Can Only Get Worse is the personal story of one political activist helping Labour progress from its 1997 landslide to the unassailable position it enjoys today. Along the way he stood for Parliament against Theresa May; he was dropped from Tony and Cherie's Christmas card list after he revealed he always sent their card on to a friend from the SWP; and he campaigned for a new nonselective inner-city state school, then realised this meant he had to send his kids to a nonselective inner-city state school.

From 55 BC to AD 1945, An Utterly Impartial History of Britain informs, explains, but most of all laughs at the seemingly incomprehensible rollercoaster of events that make up the story of Great Britain.

Strikes, hooliganism, IRA bombings and the most atrocious haircuts of the last 50 years. The 1970s do appear to be a dark time in Britain’s history. While whole counties were subsumed by concrete, roundabouts, and subways (assisting the burgeoning mugging industry), power cuts reduced the nation to women shopping in candlelight and, god forbid, actually having sex with their husbands.

The 1950s was an era viewed by many Britons to be a Golden Age; in fact, the Isle of Wight liked it so much they decided to stay there. With the end of rationing, the increase in availability of consumer goods and the money with which to buy it, Britain rushed out to purchase luxuries like TVs, fridges and its first nuclear deterrent (though their pocket money couldn’t quite stretch to it). The teenager was also invented somewhere in the United States, causing mass panic across vast swathes of suburban England.

Significant moments of the 1990s included the first Gulf War, the Fall of the Berlin Wall and John Major’s radical new traffic cone hotline. Britain would begin the decade in recession, coming to its climax on Black Wednesday, a term coined by little known shadow chancellor Gordon Brown, the rail industry would be come privatised and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait led to the first Gulf War.

Beginning with New Labour’s pithy campaign promises such as Education, Education, Education, and ending with the worst financial crises of the last six decades, the Noughties saw Labour fade from its glimmering best to a government obsessed with ‘spin’, WMDs and watching us like Big Brother while we all watched Big Brother. From the million children lifted off the poverty line, Britain winning the 2012 Olympic bid to the cataclysmic terrorist acts on the West.

The swinging sixties introduced several progressive laws to the residents of the British Isles. The conversion of the nation to flared trousers, the legalisation of colour and the right to live in a newly built tower block almost entirely made from asbestos. Yet despite the freedoms gained, the vibrant clothing, the music, often the grooviest experience of the average youth of Britain was down a mine.

Visiting the Audible Studios for the first time is comedic writer and author John O'Farrell, who's here to discuss his latest title, Things Can Only Get Worse? - the much anticipated sequel to Things Can Only Get Better, a witty memoir of his 18 years as a Labour activist. Born in Maidenhead in 1962, O'Farrell has gone from the West End to satirising politicians and from standing for election to comedic scriptwriting.

Following his hugely popular account of the previous 2000 years, John O'Farrell now comes bang up to date with a hilarious modern history asking 'How the hell did we end up here?' He informs, elucidates, and laughs at all the bizarre events, ridiculous characters, and stupid decisions that have shaped Britain's story since 1945 - leaving the 21st-century reader feeling fantastically smug for having the benefit of hindsight.

A decade dominated by the collapse of the manufacturing industry, troubles escalating in Ireland, the Falklands war, AIDs and yuppies. Not to mention the country being run by one of the most unpopular leaders of the country since polling began. Thankfully, the marriage of Charles and Di in a spectacular wedding lifted the spirits of the nation for a while, until Di promised to love, honour and then fracture the Royal Family with a string of embarrassing revelations.