Broadcasting House (radio programme)
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Broadcasting House is a current affairs programme on BBC Radio 4, presented by Paddy O'Connell. It is broadcast every Sunday morning between 9 and 10 o'clock.
Broadcasting House takes a more lighthearted approach than other news programmes, including humorous items such as "The Donald Rumsfeld Soundbite of the Week" and "Martin Jarvis Reads 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'". (The latter being the actor Martin Jarvis reading the six words "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", designed to poke fun at the amount of time Radio 4 had been devoting to Harry Potter — and to readings, of anything and everything, by Martin Jarvis.)
Other opportunities for humour come from art competitions that satirise the art world and modern art in particular, and the introduction to the programme: "This programme is protected by a glass screen, but vital parts of it aren't", referring to a flour-throwing incident in the House of Commons that week.
More serious features include the headlines and current affairs sections, which look at the background to recent news stories. There is also a review of the Sunday papers with guest reviewers. Frequent guest reviewers include Gyles Brandreth and Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer in The Archers, BBC Radio's longest-running soap opera.
The audience is encouraged to participate in the programme by the previously mentioned competitions and also through correspondence. Selected e-mails are read as they arrive, and tend to come from correspondents who share the programme's subtle sense of irony and sarcasm. During the 2005 UK general election Broadcasting House ran a regular feature to help shape a BH political party, a satire of the careful craft parties make of slogans. Their campaign slogan would be "Waving, not drowning" and theme "Whatever You Want" by Status Quo, an attempt to be prepared for the long delayed calling of the election itself.
Broadcasting House's original presenter was Eddie Mair who left the programme on becoming the regular sole presenter of PM in 2003. After a period with no regular presenter, Fi Glover replaced Mair at the beginning of 2004. Matthew Bannister was the first stand-in presenter when Glover went on maternity leave, but on gaining his own new obituary strand on Radio 4, The Last Word, most editions of BH in the spring/summer of 2006 were presented by Paddy O'Connell, late of Celebdaq and BBC Three News. Glover did not return, instead taking on the Saturday 9am slot with the new Saturday Live, and on 30 August 2006, O'Connell was named as the new regular host of BH.
