Although generally excluded from lists of BBC Radio 4 shows of historic longevity, a series presented by the comedian Jeremy Hardy, who has died from cancer at the age of 57, has the distinction of being one of the longest-running successes in the network’s history. Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation ran between 1993 and 2010, for 10 series. Its format – a monologue with interruptions from two guests – perfectly utilised the stand-up comedy skills, and smart interactions with the audience, that made Hardy such a draw on his numerous live tours of the UK.
Speaks to the Nation was structured as a lecture, loosely pastiching the “How To” formula that had begun to dominate publishing catalogues and newspaper feature pages. Poignantly, the first ever show took the topic, How To Live As Long As You Possibly Can, while more than one subsequent edition, reflecting Hardy’s own life experience, addressed the question of How To Be A Father.
Those programmes overlapped with the comedian’s first book, When Did You Last See Your Father? Being A Parent and How Men Do It (1992), which was an early contribution to the “new man” movement, although, characteristically of its author, much funnier and more self-mocking than the contributions of other precociously woke blokes.
As they developed, though, his Radio 4 shows encompassed more and more contemporary political commentary – on issues such as privatisation and American gun laws – echoing the concerns of both his standup act and his journalism: he was a weekly Guardian columnist until 2001, and later wrote numerous one-off pieces both here and elsewhere.
Another outlet for his ideological comedy was Radio 4’s The News Quiz, on which he appeared from 1994 to last year. He was also a regular on another network stalwart, the spoof panel game I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, first heard as a panellist in 1995, at the suggestion of the late ISIHAC star Willie Rushton, who had enjoyed a rant about Conservative party conferences that Hardy had delivered on The News Quiz. His most daunting early challenge on I’m Sorry, he later recalled, was “singing Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting to the tune of ‘Scarborough Fair”. Such feats showed those who saw Hardy as primarily a radical ranter that he also possessed to a high degree the traditional comic skills of improvisation and timing.
When Hardy made his debuts, The News Quiz and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue had each already been on air for more than two decades. This was significant because Hardy was part of a set of younger, edgier performers deliberately hired to modernise and democratise Radio 4 at a time when it was worried about sounding stuffy and stuck. Other members of the shake-up gang, alongside whom Hardy often appeared, were Mark Steel, Arthur Smith, and the late Linda Smith (1958-2006).
That trio, born in or on the edges of south London, were specifically intended to extend the accent palette of Radio 4, an endeavour of which someone born Jeremy James Hardy in Aldershot was less equipped to be part. Indeed the title and tone of Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation deliberately invoked, though also subverting, the BBC “talks” given by posh sorts on the wireless in the past.
However, if he sounded like a traditional newsreader, Hardy’s deceptively softly spoken contributions certainly radicalised (along with those of Steel, a close friend) the politics of a Radio 4 panel show genre that had previously often had the atmosphere of a Rotary Club quiz night.
Hardy’s political history and identity is neatly captured by two recent tweets. The comedian’s own last message on his official account – sent at 2.40am on 8 January – attacked Tony Blair’s latest intervention in the Brexit debate, warning that the former premier risked precipitating hard Brexit and a right-wing Tory government. Then, after Hardy’s death, a tweet from Jeremy Corbyn’s account read: “Jeremy Hardy was a dear, lifelong friend. He always gave his all for everyone else and the campaigns for social justice.”
As some of Hardy’s followers pointed out, Blair can be seen as fairly low on the list of those betting the country’s future over Europe, but Hardy belonged to a strain in the Labour party that could never forget nor forgive the three-term prime minister. The comedian was anti-Blair and pro-Corbyn years or even decades before others on the Left adopted those positions.
The current Labour leader’s social media interventions can sound as if they were written for him by someone younger in the office, but this one was tangibly his own, and heartfelt. Corbyn’s valedictory tribute to the other Jeremy – “You made us all smile. You made us all think” – would partly have been appreciated by Hardy, whose aim was to be both funny and provocative, although the comedian would perhaps have queried the idea that he wanted to have that effect on “all”. It was important to him to make some people (especially Tories and Blairites) very angry indeed.
He richly succeeded in delighting those on his sides, and inflaming those on others’, during a career that made Jeremy Hardy one of the most natural and original radio and standup performers.
