- 12th December: Kiri Pritchard-McLean to host Newsjack
- Genre
- Sketch Show
- Broadcast
- 2009 - 2019
- Channels
- BBC Radio 4 Extra, BBC Radio 7
- Episodes
- 121 (1 pilot + 20 series), plus 2 highlights specials
- Starring
- Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Angela Barnes, Nish Kumar, Romesh Ranganathan, Justin Edwards, Miles Jupp, George Fouracres, Lewis Macleod and others
- Writers
- Matthew Morton, Luke Catterson, James Kettle, Emma Payne, Darren Ross, Mark Spiller, Alex Buchanan, Andy Flood and others
- Producers
- Ed Morrish, Carl Cooper, Arnab Chanda, Charlie Perkins, Lyndsay Fenner, Matt Stronge, Toby Tilling, Suzy Grant, Paul Sheehan, Tilusha Ghelani and others
Newsjack is a topical sketch show created by BBC Radio 7, now on BBC Radio 4 Extra. The show aims to get comic mileage from the news - political, cultural, sports, and trivia.
Originally hosted by Miles Jupp, then Justin Edwards, followed by Romesh Ranganathan, Nish Kumar, Angela Barnes and now Kiri Pritchard-McLean, the tone is lively, satirical, and distinctly irreverent.
Notably, most of the sketches are written by members of the public, as the programme is happy to receive unsolicited material. For example, the production team revealed that for Series 7 they were reading 450 emails a week, and broadcast the work of 123 different writers.
Newsjack writing alumni include James Kettle, now writing on a variety of Radio 4 shows including It's Not What You Know; Eddie Robson, whose has created sitcom Welcome To Our Village, Please Invade Carefully; and Tom Neenan, who went on to become one of BBC Radio Comedy's bursary writers.