Oh no it wasn't

On Sunday I walked into to town listening to "Oh No It Isn't... The News Quiz". I'm not sure what the people that passed me thought was wrong with me but I did get a few odd looks. It was extremely difficult to keep a straight face and, as I walked down the high street, I had to find a lot of excuses to cover up giggles.

I wasn't at all sure what to expect from a News Quiz pantomime, especially when I was feeling a little cheated out of a Christmas Now Show. But really, this wasn't exactly a News Quiz pantomime, more of a whole Radio 4 pantomime. Which is even better! The only part that felt a little awkward was the start and the concept that the whole thing was part of Sandi Toksvig's diary. Or maybe that's just because news readers doing acting can be unsettling. Not that there's anything wrong, for example, with Alice Arnold in the current David Copperfield dramatisation on 4 Extra but I do keep expecting Agnes Wickfield to launch into today's headlines. 

Once the initial premise was out of the way, Oh No It Isn't romped with reckless abandon through every mainstay of the Radio 4 schedule. It gleefully rolled up Desert Island Discs, Just a Minute, Feedback and many others and coated them in the fabulous nonsense of pantomime traditions. 

I do worry if there might be something a little odd about the Radio 4 audience though. We all love taking the piss out of the the hot air of You and Yours, the bickering of Moral Maze, Jeremy Hardy's singing talents and I don't think there's anyone that hasn't laughed at a good Quote Unquote joke over the years.  But if I heard any of this from outsiders, I'd loudly and vehemently point out the many ways in which they were wrong about the station - possibly with more synonyms than Nicholas Parsons - until they gave up the argument in desperation. This is the sort of comprehensive and affectionate mocking that only true lovers of Radio 4 can appreciate.

Maybe all fanbases are a little like this but I think there's something truly special about Radio 4 addicts and, for those of us who turn the radio on first in the morning and turn it off last at night, Oh No It Isn't felt like the best present under the festive radio tree. Like the gift you save for last, it was extremely well judged, exactly what we all wanted even though we never knew it and it clearly came from people who know us far, far too well.