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Domestic Science- 2 episodes of a15 minute comedy show with The Festival of the Spoken Nerd, a trio of physicists and mathmaticians, with science experiments you can do in your own home. Featuring the song about measuring radiation in bananas.

Muses with Milligan- Audio from a TV show championing jazz and poetry presented by Spike Milligan. This is simply his own poems and comedy read by himself. I ran out of space so it stops mid-story- it continues here.

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Muses with Milligan- the continuation of the first part.

3.17 to Cleethorpes- a play from 60s radio programme I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again concerning a secret agent whose work is so secret he can’t even be told what it is, a nun (or a penguin) and the general state of the British rail system.

Total Eclipse of Descartes- radio show by Robert Newman critically discussing philosophy, but it’s also a comedy show so some of the points are exaggerated or simplified for jokes. However I don’t know enough about philosophy to know and get angry, unlike with his earlier science based shows.

Listeners on Strike- an opening sketch from I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. The programme is so bad the listeners are encouraged not to tune in.

Bunk Bed- Patrick Marber and Peter Curran have meandering conversations whilst lying in a real bunk bed.

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Carol Goes Swimming: One of Jenny Eclair’s monologue plays, Little Lifetimes. A woman is told by her doctor to get more exercise, so she goes to the swimming pool late one evening and reflects on her life. 15 minutes.

John Finnemore on My Teenage Diary: John Finnemore reads aloud and discusses extracts from his diary from when he taught English in Poland as a nineteen year old on his gap year. 1/2 an hour. 

George’s Cake: Another episode of Little Lifetimes, this time hearing the story of a woman in an emotionally abusive marriage as she builds up to revealing her final act of rebellion (happy ending). Tw domestic abuse and animal abuse. 15 minutes.

Ivor Meets Craig: Ivor Cutler talking to his friend Craig Murray-Orr about his work as a sculptist. 15 minutes.

Nurse:  Sketch not-really comedy about a community mental health nurse visiting various patients. Tw mental illness. 15 minutes.

ISIRTA sketches including the song Marcella’s Lane make up the rest of the time.

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The Scythe: Adaption of Ray Bradbury’s short horror story about a family living in poverty during the Great Depression who come across a farm, the owner of which has just passed away, and they inherit the farm from him. They begin to harvest the crops using the previous farmer’s scythe but gradually discovers the sinister role the farm plays in the workings of the world. 

The Double: Adaption of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s psychological horror novella. A man’s already miserable life is further complicated by the appearance of a man who looks exactly like him and even shares the same name, but is vastly more successful in his work and social life due to being more socially adept and confident, and nobody else seems to notice the resemblance. 

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In The Wake of Wakefield: Adam Rutherford presents a documentary on Andrew Wakefield’s now discredited research into the link between vaccination and autism, explaining how the effects of his appalling scientific conduct are still being felt around the world today. 1 hour.

The Remains of Foley and McColl: A surreal black comedy programme from 2000 about a double act trying to create a successful radio show. In this episode, Foley and McColl must try to make their programme more edgy and dark. Tw death of an animal. 1/2 an hour.

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A Day in October: One of Sarah Kendall’s autobiographical comedy programme documenting her friendship with a severely bullied boy. Tw for bullying, vomiting and a death which could be interpreted as suicide (not a spoiler). 1/2 an hour.

The Remains of Foley and McColl: Two episodes of a surreal black comedy programme from 2000 about a double act trying to create a successful radio show. The first episode, The Real You, has their producer criticise them for being too artificial and reliant on stage personas, so they are forced to attend an extortionate retreat to discover themselves. The second episode is actually Snuff Radio not Cutting Edge but I can’t seem to change the file title, and in this one the pair unintentionally create a new genre in which the performers in a programme are hunted down and killed, and inevitably this episode is an example of that genre. Each episode is 1/2 an hour.

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Nurse-  Sketch not-really comedy about a community mental health nurse visiting various patients. Tw mental illness. 15 minutes.

Gyles Brandreth on My Teenage Diary- the programme title is so cringey but depending on the guest it can be really good. The guest chooses and reads out extracts from their teenage diary and provides additional details for the experiences they relate. Brandreth has been keeping a diary since his teenage years, but never goes back to read his previous diaries, he just keeps them all in a room. 

The Moth Radio Hour- in this programme, a number of people choose to tell often very personal stories about a moment in their life, and they have to do it without any notes to prompt them. Each episode links all the stories together with a theme. I forget what it was for this one, but I recorded two of them- one about a teenager who decided to go to their school prom after not being very interested initially, and one about a couple who go to a very odd Russian massage parlour for their anniversary. 25 minutes. 

Bunk Bed-  Peter Curran and Patrick Marber talking about various things, ostensibly whilst in a bunk bed. This episode they have a guest on the pull-out mattress, Jane Horrocks. 15 minutes. 

ISIRTA song- Auto Destructive Rag, satire (?) on the late 60s fashion of auto destructive art and twelve tone music, describing how to create a completely terrible piece of music. Tw rape mention (just the word “rape” in the context of a list of verbs that relate to damaging or destroying something.) 

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Le Carre on Spying-  a comedy drama by The Penny Dreadfuls, in which the spy thriller author John Le Carre is himself a spy, and becomes involved in a plot to assassinate John F Kennedy on his upcoming visit to Berlin. This is part 2, it’s only about six minutes. The preceding 50 minutes can be heard here.

PL Travers: Mary Poppins- dramatisation of the books by PL Travers that inspired the 1963 Disney film. They are significantly different to the film in both story and general tone, with a lot more dry, dark humour, although one scene, with the aunt who is turned upside-down against her will every week, is surprisingly present and was used in Mary Poppins Returns. It’s quite smart how Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra repeat programmes when they’re relevant to new film releases and TV programmes. 50 minutes. 

Inside the Comedian: John Finnemore- technically this is a podcast so really you could look it up online but I have an apocalyptic vision of the future in which the Internet no longer exists and my cassettes are the only source of radio programmes (yet somehow I’ll still be able to charge the batteries for my Walkman). Anyway, this is a mock interview of John Finnemore. Ostensibly he’s being asked about his career, but the specific details have been changed, so he talks about “Cabin Pfizer...the small family-run pharmaceutical giant,” and fabricates ridiculous details of his approach to writing. 20 minutes. 

Then I had some space to fill up so there’s some Gorillaz songs (Humility, Dirty Harry), the theme from Radio Active and John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme (although that gets cut off before the end). 

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Haunting of MR James- Radio 4 went a bit overboard with the idea of “Christmas ghost story” this past Christmas: as well as ten adaptions of MR James stories, there was also this original new drama written by Mark Gatiss, which is a sort of embellished biopic of MR James. I’m not sure how true to life the events are, but in the drama they’re shown as directly inspiring James in terms of the content of his stories. The drama focuses on James’ time at Cambridge, and how he was affected by the death of one of the students he was responsible for and consequent mental illness of another. This is part 2. Part 1 here. Just under 43 minutes. Tw mental illness.

Le Carre on Spying- a comedy drama by The Penny Dreadfuls, in which the spy thriller author John Le Carre is himself a spy, and becomes involved in a plot to assassinate John F Kennedy on his upcoming visit to Berlin. This is part 1 (the majority of the programme). 50 minutes.

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Letters of Sylvia Plath- Reading of the poet Sylvia Plath’s correspondence to various people starting from her meeting and marrying Ted Hughes and following the progression of their respective careers and their family life. 57 minutes. 

Clips of The Missing Hancocks- The Winter Holiday (in a classically bleak moment, Hancock is drowning in the freezing ocean but still has the energy to insult Snide), John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme- Peter Parker sketch and the Ray Ellington Quartet’s instrumental piece from the Space Age episode of The Goon Show. 

Haunting of MR James- Radio 4 went a bit overboard with the idea of “Christmas ghost story” this past Christmas: as well as ten adaptions of MR James stories, there was also this original new drama written by Mark Gatiss, which is a sort of embellished biopic of MR James. I’m not sure how true to life the events are, but in the drama they’re shown as directly inspiring James in terms of the content of his stories. The drama focuses on James’ time at Cambridge, and how he was affected by the death of one of the students he was responsible for and consequent mental illness of another. This is part 1, part 2 will be uploaded later and linked. 20 minutes. 

Tw: mental illness for both of the main dramas here (Sylvia Plath and MR James).

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In Our Time: Cephalopods- a discussion of cephalopods such as squid, octopus and cuttlefish, including their very interesting abilities. 40 minutes. 

All Those Women- a recent sitcom focusing on four generations of women in a family, all living together. In this episode, the grandmother and great-grandmother travel together to pick up a piano in a van. It’s got Ottery St Mary vibes. 30 minutes.

In Mr Bruin’s Time- a short story read by Bernard Cribbins, about a school bus driver who is repeatedly in trouble with the school for deviating from the time limits of the route to wait for children who are late or give lifts to other inhabitants of the village. 15 minutes. 

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In Our Time: Echolocation- a discussion of echolocation in bats. 40 minutes.

Then a few songs- Elevator Operator by Courtney Barnett and some ISIRTA songs.

Nurse: Sketch not-really comedy about a community mental health nurse visiting various patients. Trigger warning for mental illness. Two episodes, 15 minutes each.

Bunk Bed: Peter Curran and Patrick Marber talking in the dark. 10 minutes.

Then a couple of Beatles songs

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My first ever self-made cassette. The audio quality is not good at all, you need a really good pair of headphones and/or to turn the volume up quite high, but it’s one of my favourites nevertheless. The start is me trying to work out how to use the recording equipment so it sounds a bit weird. 

Three episodes of Ivor Cutler’s A Wet Handle: a typical nineties Ivor Cutler programme, with surreal sketches and monologues and songs. There’s supposed to be long pauses between sketches. 

Then I had a bit of space left so I put on a song from ISIRTA, the end music from the Blackboard Jungle episode of Hancock’s Half Hour and the Captain Dinosaur song from John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme. 

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Radio 4 Saturdays in 4 Minutes- Jake Yapp, from Jake Yapp’s Media Circus

ISIRTA: Professor Prune and the Electric Time Trousers episodes 12 and 13 - the second serial of the series, a Doctor Who parody. The characters go all over time and space in the Professor’s incredible time-travelling trousers. It is a serial but each instalment is relatively self-contained, and the last two episodes are the best. For the 13th episode, the joke is basically that each member of the cast is making their character the lead, or else shoehorning in other characters that they play in the show (Graeme Garden plays both the Professor and Fetish). Just under ½ an hour.

David Attenborough’s Life Stories: Charnia and Canopy- monologues by David Attenborough about his career. Ten minutes each.

Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl- a psychological thriller by Ray Bradbury about a man trying to remove the evidence of the murder he has committed. Possibly a trigger if you suffer from OCD, OCPD, paranoia or anxiety. ½ an hour. 

Roger McGough- Surreal sketch comedy, 15 minutes.

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Radio 4 Saturdays in 4 Minutes- Jake Yapp, from Jake Yapp’s Media Circus

ISIRTA: Professor Prune and the Electric Time Trousers episodes 12 and 13 - the second serial of the series, a Doctor Who parody. The characters go all over time and space in the Professor’s incredible time-travelling trousers. It is a serial but each instalment is relatively self-contained, and the last two episodes are the best. For the 13th episode, the joke is basically that each member of the cast is making their character the lead, or else shoehorning in other characters that they play in the show (Graeme Garden plays both the Professor and Fetish). Just under 1/2 an hour.

David Attenborough’s Life Stories: Charnia and Canopy- monologues by David Attenborough about his career. Ten minutes each.

Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl- a psychological thriller by Ray Bradbury about a man trying to remove the evidence of the murder he has committed. Possibly a trigger if you suffer from OCD, OCPD, paranoia or anxiety. 1/2 an hour. 

Roger McGough- Surreal sketch comedy, 15 minutes.

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Seventy Five Years- final episode of Sarah Kendall’s Australian Trilogy. 1/2 an hour.

Hearing with Hegley- surreal comedic poetry and songs played on many instruments including a mandolin. John Hegley is very into DOGS and GLASSES if you wear contact lenses he comes round and shouts at you. 15 minutes. 

Total Eclipse of Descartes 1- Robert Newman’s most recent series, challenging and discussing ideas in philosophy. Newman is not an expert in any of the fields he makes programmes about, rather all his knowledge comes from reading books and forming his own opinions, so his views aren’t necessarily completely trustworthy or accurate and he does miss out details for comic effect, but he makes some interesting points, providing a fresh perspective. 1/2 an hour.

Domestic Science- you know this. 15 minutes.

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Roger McGough’s Other Half again ~15 minutes

One Seventeen: Part 2 of Sarah Kendall’s Australina Trilogy ~1/2 an hour

ISIRTA: Series 8, Episode 4- Circus Life ~1/2 an hour

Bunk Bed: Peter Curran and Patrick Marber talking about various things, ostensibly whilst in a bunk bed.~1/2 an hour