h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Whatever I might think of the BBC today, it's always done great radio comedy. I'm not going to even try listing all, or even some of them... except maybe for the one that kicked off this website

For several years though, the 11pm Wednesday slot on Radio 4 (and also 11.30pm when parliament is on holiday) has thrown up some of my favourites; John Shuttleworth, Seymour the Fractal Cat, The Goldfish Bowl, North by Northamptonshire, World of Pub and some others I can't recall. Maybe because it's after the watershed it can be a bit more, shall we say, interesting. Although none of them really bother with anything you could call smutty, they're not always as safe as something that gets a broadcast in the 6.30pm slot.

And now there's a new one - Warhorses of Letters. I stumbled upon the first episode of the second series a few days ago (if you want to listen to it you've got... four hours and counting http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p0s13 ). It's based around the unlikely premise that the two horses written by Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington are gay and are having a long distance love affair by exchanging letters At least, I think it's long distance - I only just got hold of the first series and listened to the first episode. Going by the description on that page it looks like they might have met on the field of battle, probably Waterloo.

It's very well written, and Stephen Fry provides the voice of Marengo, the French horse, but you've got to wonder where on earth the idea for something like that must have come from

Written by Napoleon

Ridden. Le sigh.

Well, they unearthed it d'int they? From some earth, in an earthenware factory(?) once owned by Eartha Kitt. They moved heaven and Earth to get it.

I'm currently listening to the second episode of series 1. Definitely post-watershed material

Hmmm... didn't Waterloo happen after Napoleon escaped from Elba?

Oh my horsey God, Copenhagen needs to calm the down and stop being such a

Sounds like a hoot.

Hypatia? Nice to see you back again

Why, thanky. It's good to be back. I'm going to make a better effort to stick around.

Yay!

I've heard *of* this, but never actually heard it. Must look it up.

TRiG.

Well it's happened again. I was listening to the 6 o'clock news on Radio 4 a short while ago and left the stream running when the news finished. The 6.30 comedy was once I've never listened to before - Cabin Pressure http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qdzc4

The first thing you might notice is the name of the actor playing Captain Martin Crieff - Benedict Cumberbatch - who seems to be flavour of the month right now what with Sherlock, the new Star Trek film, and I hear he might be playing Alan Turing in an upcoming film or TV production.

But the character that really stood out for me is the acerbic First Officer played by Roger Allam, who was cast in a completely different role in The Queen. He was Her Maj's private secretary, Robin Janvrin, who you might remember walking around Balmoral holding a wicker tray with the royal correspondence and being terribly subservient.

There are some actors who seem to be all over Radio 4 right now, and one of them - Stephanie Cole - is in this too. She's also in Ed Reardon's Week, which is another radio programme I've come to love but came to rather late, along with Geoffrey Whitehead and Rita May - two other actors who are in what must be Radio 4's rep company because I hear them in other programmes too.

I'm starting to sound a bit like Ed Reardon. I often find myself doing that sort of exasperated sigh that he does when the doorbell goes or the phone rings

They're back! Copenhagen and Marengo http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p0s13

Albeit for a repeat of the second series.

I've found it!


Geggs

Ah... we were looking for a second journal entry.

Geggs, you have too much time on your hands

Did you do a websearch or trawl through the back pages in my journal?

I just did a bit of googling. The results mostly took me several researchers' convo pages, and the actual thread was the very last result.


Geggs

I actually slogged all they way back across more than 30 pages till I saw the original thread. I didn't think to check if it had just been updated by a later post.

That's strange, giving all the combinations of Gosho plus h2g2 plus Warhorses-related keywords I Googled. They're all in this conversation and yet none of them showed up in the results so I didn't look through the back pages thinking the thread didn't exist.

I first searched for:

Kiss Kiss hoofprint h2g2

which brought up a load of convo pages, with a comma after the second kiss showing in the result details, so I then searched on:

"Kiss Kiss, hoofprint" h2g2

Which bought up the convo pages again, along with the usual blurb that similar results were omitted. This time I click to repeat the search including the omitted results, and this thread appeared as the last result on the second page.

Didn't take too long really. Probably took longer to write this post.


Geggs