The Now Show

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The Now Show is a British satirical radio show, starring Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt (previously of The Mary Whitehouse Experience) as well as Marcus Brigstocke, Mitch Benn, Laura Shavin, the very short Jon Holmes, and occasional special guests.

Known for heavy use of Running Gags: The Other Wiki used to have a long list of them, and may still do.

This show provides examples of:

• Biting the Hand Humour: Practically Once an Episode, towards The BBC, Radio 4 in particular, and Radio 4 listeners.
• Curse Cut Short
• Dan Browned: The original definition is mentioned in The Now Show Book of World Records, where Dennis talks about how he noticed loads of errors in the part of The Da Vinci Code set in the BBC and wonders how much of the rest must have been wrong.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Mentioned in the Book of World Records under "Most Incompetent Cartoon Villain".
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of the cast.
• Department of Redundancy Department: In It's Been A Bad Week, the award given each episode is "The Worst Week of the Week Award, Awarded Weekly on a Week-by-Week Basis".
• Epunymous Title: The basis of the "Worst TV Sitcom Premise" section of the Book of World Records:

Rhythm is a Dancer: Maggie Rhythm is a dancer. With hilarious consequences.

• Executive Meddling: Not surprisingly, given that the BBC is involved.
• Hater Nickname: Brigstocke invariably refers to Blaine as "The Git-Wizard"
• Hurricane of Puns
• Hypocritical Humor
• Incredibly Lame Pun
• Lampshade Hanging
• Least Rhymable Word
• Long Runners: On air for over a decade
• Medium Awareness
• No Fourth Wall
• Only in Florida: It's Been A Bad Week (see below) focuses on these kinds of stories.
• Plug N Play Technology: referenced with regard to Independence Day under "Coolest Spaceship of All Time" in The Book.
• Refuge in Audacity
• Room Full of Crazy: Called "the nutter's den" in The Book's "Biggest TV Detective Cliche".
• Running Gag: Too many to list.
• Shout Out: Not least to The Goon Show. At one point, when the England cricketer Andrew Flintoff had been in the news for falling off a pedalo:

Little Jim: He's fallen in the wa-ter. Hugh Dennis: Yes, we'll steal anyone's catchphrases, we don't care.

• Spiritual Successor: The Mary Whitehouse Experience, as above.
  • Spiritual Thing-That's-On-In-The-Off-Season: It's Been A Bad Week on Radio 2, a topical satire show hosted by Punt and Dennis, with Mitch doing the songs, but which was otherwise a completely different show with a different format.
• Take That
• Take That, Audience!: Regular jibes at the live audience and listeners being the stereotypical idea of Radio 4 listeners.

"Where else would 'over 40' be classified as 'young'? [[[Beat]]] This is Radio 4."