Pam Ayres's comedy and Dan and Phil's Guide to Happiness were a perfect cure for the January blues
*Ayres on the Air** *(Radio 4) | iPlayer
*Dan and Phil's Guide to Happiness *(Radio 1) | iPlayer
It's Friday morning and I find myself listening to Pam Ayres. An experience so warm and cosy that donning a fleece-lined onesie and drinking Nesquik in front of a roaring fire suddenly seems dangerously gritty. Ayres's welcoming Berkshire burr, her tweeness and twinkle, her love of limericks: all as familiar and reassuring as a children's bedtime fairytale.
Ayres was a star throughout the late 1970s and early 80s, her deliberately simple, silly poems winning her Opportunity Knocks in 1975 and catapulting her into the British mainstream. She was always on the telly, never off the radio, smirking and corpsing her way through Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth. And all these years later she remains remarkably unchanged. Unlike other comic performers – which is, in essence, what she is – Ayres has not become bitter. She is never frantic, or dismissive, or defensive about getting older. When she makes jokes about young people, they are specific – she talks about her own sons – rather than sweeping and class-based. There is nothing grand about her. She's more garden mulch patch than Chelsea Flower Show.
This is an act, of course, but it comes from a genuine place. Ayres's shtick is based on her life, and her fans love her for it. *Ayres on the Air*, the show I'm listening to, is part sitcom, part live act, and during the live segments the audience's involvement is palpable: it "aw"s after a poem about her son leaving; it doesn't make a sound when she writes about how sad she would be to leave her home; it actually tuts when husband Gordon (Geoffrey Whitehead) says he's expecting a coffee because, when he was working, his secretary would make him one.
Though it's for her poems that Ayres is famous, I enjoyed the sitcom inserts rather more than I thought I would: they're so well observed, and Whitehead as Gordon delivers his lines beautifully. Some of those are a bit obvious – there was a set-up about liking "old, battered things with character", and the audience got to the punchline way before it was even said – but others are just perfect. When discussing whether they should sleep in separate beds, Ayres asks Gordon if he's been upstairs at their neighbours' recently. He says no. Then: "Well, only to admire his loft ladder."
Over on Radio 1, laughter has been the aim of the past week – or, at least, happiness has. Mondays in January are, apparently, the time we are most likely to feel down, so last Monday, 1's Sunday night saviours, *Dan and Phil*, launched the station's Happiness Week, with a show in the regular documentary slot, about how to be happy. Now, I'm loath to say anything at all about Dan and Phil, as the last time I did, their multitudinous fans got the hump and swamped my Twitter feed with death threats, even though I thought I'd written a positive review. So this time, I'd like to be clear.
I think Dan and Phil are funny, but very occasionally they sound a little too scripted. They're different from the rest of the Radio 1 crew, in that they're creative types rather than regular DJ/presenters, and this means that their wit is also different: more surreal and out there, less "ooh listen to me and my amazing life". I like this. And although the start of this documentary suffered from sounding a bit "read", as it progressed, everything became more relaxed. I enjoyed the funny/awful happiness yoga and the visit to the cattery.
And there you have it… Anyhow, what I think about the documentary doesn't really matter, as a) Dan and Phil are doing fine without my input and b) I was pretty cheerful to start off with. As long as they make all their thousands of fans happy, which they do, then, you know, mission accomplished. Plus, Radio 1, which I've been listening to on and off all week, has been an upbeat place to visit. I hope it has kept everyone's spirits up. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.
*Ayres on the Air** *(Radio 4) | iPlayer
*Dan and Phil's Guide to Happiness *(Radio 1) | iPlayer
It's Friday morning and I find myself listening to Pam Ayres. An experience so warm and cosy that donning a fleece-lined onesie and drinking Nesquik in front of a roaring fire suddenly seems dangerously gritty. Ayres's welcoming Berkshire burr, her tweeness and twinkle, her love of limericks: all as familiar and reassuring as a children's bedtime fairytale.
Ayres was a star throughout the late 1970s and early 80s, her deliberately simple, silly poems winning her Opportunity Knocks in 1975 and catapulting her into the British mainstream. She was always on the telly, never off the radio, smirking and corpsing her way through Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth. And all these years later she remains remarkably unchanged. Unlike other comic performers – which is, in essence, what she is – Ayres has not become bitter. She is never frantic, or dismissive, or defensive about getting older. When she makes jokes about young people, they are specific – she talks about her own sons – rather than sweeping and class-based. There is nothing grand about her. She's more garden mulch patch than Chelsea Flower Show.
This is an act, of course, but it comes from a genuine place. Ayres's shtick is based on her life, and her fans love her for it. *Ayres on the Air*, the show I'm listening to, is part sitcom, part live act, and during the live segments the audience's involvement is palpable: it "aw"s after a poem about her son leaving; it doesn't make a sound when she writes about how sad she would be to leave her home; it actually tuts when husband Gordon (Geoffrey Whitehead) says he's expecting a coffee because, when he was working, his secretary would make him one.
Though it's for her poems that Ayres is famous, I enjoyed the sitcom inserts rather more than I thought I would: they're so well observed, and Whitehead as Gordon delivers his lines beautifully. Some of those are a bit obvious – there was a set-up about liking "old, battered things with character", and the audience got to the punchline way before it was even said – but others are just perfect. When discussing whether they should sleep in separate beds, Ayres asks Gordon if he's been upstairs at their neighbours' recently. He says no. Then: "Well, only to admire his loft ladder."
Over on Radio 1, laughter has been the aim of the past week – or, at least, happiness has. Mondays in January are, apparently, the time we are most likely to feel down, so last Monday, 1's Sunday night saviours, *Dan and Phil*, launched the station's Happiness Week, with a show in the regular documentary slot, about how to be happy. Now, I'm loath to say anything at all about Dan and Phil, as the last time I did, their multitudinous fans got the hump and swamped my Twitter feed with death threats, even though I thought I'd written a positive review. So this time, I'd like to be clear.
I think Dan and Phil are funny, but very occasionally they sound a little too scripted. They're different from the rest of the Radio 1 crew, in that they're creative types rather than regular DJ/presenters, and this means that their wit is also different: more surreal and out there, less "ooh listen to me and my amazing life". I like this. And although the start of this documentary suffered from sounding a bit "read", as it progressed, everything became more relaxed. I enjoyed the funny/awful happiness yoga and the visit to the cattery.
And there you have it… Anyhow, what I think about the documentary doesn't really matter, as a) Dan and Phil are doing fine without my input and b) I was pretty cheerful to start off with. As long as they make all their thousands of fans happy, which they do, then, you know, mission accomplished. Plus, Radio 1, which I've been listening to on and off all week, has been an upbeat place to visit. I hope it has kept everyone's spirits up. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.