Radio hit Ed Reardon makes stage debut in Edinburgh

Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds's comedy creation steps out of the radio and on to the stage for the first time.

Writing Beauty of Britain

Writers Christopher Douglas and Nicola Sanderson talk about writing radio comedy Beauty of Britain and finding genuine humour in the most difficult and profound places...

Sharp new comedy, from Christopher Douglas and Nicola Sanderson. Beauty (Jocelyn Jee Esien) is an African woman, in Britain to work, finding it hard to make her family back home understand why she can't supply new glasses and sundry other stuff on request. But she has to send some money back home so she goes to an agency and says she's available for care work. All she's offered is a bit of cleaning. It turns out to be for a really interesting woman (Jenny Agutter) who lives with her mother and her own daughter. I didn't think I'd laugh. I did. A lot.

Now starting his seventh series, Ed Reardon is attaining the kind of popularity that makes those of us who discovered him early feel possessive. Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas's creation gets endless trails, repeated by presenters with a chuckle in their voices. The first episode of Ed Reardon's Week was a classic, pitting the freelance hack yet again against the forces of useless youth. Starving and forced to forage for blackberries, Ed gets a break when he is commissioned to help out Ben Herbert, young author of the "Dude, Where My Career?" column in The Observer. How did he get that? Ed inquires. "I was spending the weekend with my uncle and he was like, 'I've got this Sunday newspaper that needs filling every week'." "Ah!" says Ed bitterly, "The plot thins." Drafted in to help write "How to Survive with Like No Cash", Ed suggests hiding in the luggage space on National Express, stealing flowers from cemeteries and recycling Christmas cards. Fortunately, the lucrative venture falls through when Ben is talent spotted by Downing Street and promoted to Graduate Employment Tsar, leaving Ed just as starving and bitter as before.

The success of Ed Reardon the series is in inverse proportion to Ed Reardon the character. He is now critic-proof, which is great but a fresh danger awaits. Just like all those Archers photographs, which totally ruined everyone's love of the characters, so visualising Ed Reardon in any way would be disastrous. While I can hear him cursing me even now, can I just say please BBC, don't ever commission Ed Reardon the TV series.

On Radio 4, we heard from another grumpy and financially unsuccessful writer. I speak of the fictional Ed Reardon, author of episode 29 of Tenko ("I still use Burt Kwouk's risotto recipe"), a play called Educating Peter and [o]John Kettley's Big Book of Weather[/i]. Reardon, named for Edwin Reardon in Gissing's novel New Grub Street, is my hero, the only man worth listening to - I exclude even the sainted Eddie Mair in this instance - after a bad day at the keyboard.

An Audience With Ed Reardon came to us "live" from Edinburgh, where some 12-year-old BBC commissioning editor had provided our hero (played by one of his creators, Christopher Douglas) with readers for his jottings in the form of a couple of actors from a fringe production of Titus Andronicus. Poor Ed. He'd wanted Rodney Bewes, who starred in the film of Ed's awful novel, Who Would Fardels Bear? "Rodney Bewes would have nailed it!" he shouted when they fluffed a bit from Educating Peter. I laughed out loud at this, though I do see - how to put this? - that one must be of a certain age and sensibility to get this gag. Ditto the moment when he yelled: "I'll do the Trimphone!" Oh, Ed. If only you were real, I'd pop over to Berkhamsted and buy you lunch.

Embracing ageing with open arms, the crustiest antediluvian on radio was back in the form of Ed Reardon, performing "With Great Pleasure without the pleasure" in a stage version of his own works. Written by Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas, An Audience With Ed Reardon was a savage hymn to the horror of freelance life, complete with rejection slips, ("Dear Mr Reardon, how did you get this address?") and excerpts from his afternoon play, A Bargeful of Blood, described by one reviewer as "the most harrowing afternoon's ironing I've ever had". Failure is a theme that English writers have always done well - think of Dickens - and Reardon encapsulates brilliantly the plight of an ageing hack beset by new technology, patronising publishers and "12-year-old commissioning editors". You wonder what will happen when Ed encounters a BBC Media Literacy Ambassador, but somehow you can already imagine.

Ed Reardon - author, pipe smoker, consummate fare-dodger and master of the abusive email, as he likes to be known - is one of the best and most original comic figures to appear on radio this last five years. Recorded in front of an eager crowd at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, this live performance features Ed - played by Christopher Douglas - reading extracts from his oeuvre, including Jane Seymour's Household Hints (ghost-written) and an episode of Tenko. While not as unremittingly funny as an episode of Ed Reardon's Week, it's still worth catching.

Dave Podmore on the Stump (Radio 4, Wednesday) was a glorious post-election tonic. Not all cricket fans love Podmore, sublime comic creation of Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds with assistance here from Nick Newman. He is, for some, too louche, too coarse. Only as louche and coarse, of course, as some former county players who turn up in reality shows and commentary boxes. This was the story of how, by Podmore-ish accident, he became an MP, observed and assisted as always by the faithful Andy, reporter for fictional but recognisable Radio One County. Pod had to stand down, of course, but not before enough jokes to make the script fizz and me fall off the chair laughing. On this show (produced by independents Hat Trick) even (the real) Jeremy Paxman sounded as if he were, at last, enjoying himself.

An election special or, rather, a post-election tonic. Dave Podmore, once a pretty middling kind of cricketer, latterly the sort of lowest league celeb who promotes office stationery or turns up on TV reality shows, has been elected MP for the marginal seat of Leicester Forest Services (East). Has he been the beneficiary of the Undecided vote? Or was he just too drunk to remember what happened at the count? (And did his distant cousin Ed Reardon campaign for him?) Written by and starring Christopher Douglas, Andrew Nickolds and Nick Newman.

Radio: Ed Reardon's Week

It is one of life's great imponderables that the misadventures of Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds's indomitable failure are broadcast at a time when few but Ed himself are likely to be listening. Particularly as this latest - the sixth, can it be so long? - series has been of a standard as high as any.