Jake Yapp is holed up in Scott Mill's BBC studio with a broken chair and microphones that still have tinsel wrapped around them. He has been given the somewhat daunting task of keeping Radio 4Extra's notoriously (and increasingly) vocal audience happy throughout January. It will not be an easy task.
Regular 4Extra listeners were already seriously narked, given the BBC's announcement in 2022 that it intends to bin the station off entirely at some point in the next three years. In the dying months of the year however this sense of frustration was amplified by a series of unexpected and radical changes to the existing Radio 4Extra schedule, which saw - amongst other things - the end of the Crime and Thrillers strand between 8pm and 9pm. The changes inflicted on the station in recent months might not be as extreme as those inflicted on Twitter by Elon Musk in the same period, but the level of reported unhappiness has been much the same. Jake Yapp's Unwinding will be going out every weekday evening between 7pm and 10pm, replacing the old Classic Comedy, Crime and Thrillers and 9pm documentary slots. It is, indeed, a gamble. Will it work?
Yapp began well on Monday evening by launching into a polished and suitably misanthropic re-working of 'It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year', but the initial vibe of the show was confusing. On one level, he seemed to be working up an extension of the kind of material he would have delivered, between comedy shows, in The Comedy Club (which continues in the 10pm - Midnight slot seven days a week, albeit presented by continuity announcers instead of comedians as previously) but on the other hand the jingles particularly give it the feel of an afternoon show on Radio 2. Which is a little jarring at times. It's possible that Yapp or producer Laura Grimshaw have realised this as, by Wednesday night, said jingles were being much more sparingly used.
Essentially, Unwinding's format consists of Jake, his special guest of the evening (Monday was Jessica Fostekew, Tuesday was Isy Suttie, Wednesday Sara Baron) and producer Laura talking, inviting and reading out contributions from listeners, plus regular content such as the already legendary Celebrity Soup Of The Day, the more hit/miss Culture Wars and interviews with those of interest to the comedy world, such as former Muppets and Spitting Image puppeteer, Louise Gold. In-between all of this, he plays extracts or (in the case of shorter content) full episodes of comedy shows, podcasts and book serialisations and makes use of suitably self depreciating/withering anti-endorsements from his more serious BBC colleagues: The Huw Edwards disclaimer played at the end of each show is hilariously withering. As Yapp himself put it on Wednesday night, it's a bit like a Radio 2 show only playing comedy extracts instead of records. Though I'd say it's more like The Comedy Club as a magazine show.
Some comedy show extracts are integrated more easily into this three hour show than others, with 15 minute shows faring better than 30 minute ones on the whole. Some of the longer shows can bear being chopped up and interrupted, for example John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, which is made up of self contained sketches, but some feel a bit less well integrated, such as the chopped up episode of Women Talking About Cars on Wednesday night, which didn't chunk as well.
This is a minor point though as the show clearly has legs and much to recommend it. This would include Yapp's interviews, particularly with Louse Gold who, in part 2 of her interview (broadcast during the Wednesday episode) talked to Jake about being the first person to operate the Queen's puppet and voice it for Spitting Image. She watched the Queen's funeral with the Queen's puppet next to her on the sofa.
Similarly good is the serialisation of Daisy Buchanan's eye opening satirical novel Careering, the fly-on-the-wall esque cabbie comedy Where To Mate? and episodes of The Boring Talks, which go out after 9pm when the show takes on a slightly less chaotic energy. Monday's Boring Talk was given by a teenage ice cream van driver, Wednesday's by a pencil enthusiast.
In terms of the original content created by Yapp alongside Grimshaw and his guests and contributors, Celebrity Soup Of The Day has been the established star of the show since Monday, but some of the Culture Wars 'debates' also deserve a mention. I wasn't sure about The Culture Wars debate on Monday, but I was won over by Tuesday's during which Grimshaw earnestly tried to find a negative thing to say about custard as Suttie and Yapp chugged (and gargled) the supermarket own brand variety of the yellow stuff in the background. The custard chat, sandwiched as it was either side of an episode of Where To Mate?, was sublime. Somewhere in there things took an increasingly surreal turn, leading to discussion of a pudding inside a pudding inside a pudding, which was daft enough to remind me of the swiss army cake in Undone (Series 2, episode 2: "It's a cake but it also contains lots of little more useful cakes that come out the side")
The nightly re-cap of the previous nights episode of Celebrity Soup Of The Day is so hilarious meanwhile that it's in serious danger of eclipsing the (admittedly fine) feature itself, coming as it does with a suitably hoarse male Hollywood style voiceover, giving listeners the impression that they're listening to a more surreal episode of Dragon's Den.
It would be easier to command you to listen to Celebrity Soup Of The Day than it would be to try and explain the concept or, indeed, the rules. At a basic level, it involves a member of the public trying to guess what the soup of the day is at a particular UK pub or restaurant, but there's an element of jeopardy as the caller must 'stake' a celebrity of their choice and the class of celebrity must represent how confident they feel in their guess. The delight on Wednesday night when Martin the listener correctly guessed that the soup on offer at a certain pub in Blackburn was indeed minestrone and that he hadn't sacrificed Clive Myrie, was palpable. I think this means Martin gets to 'keep' Myrie as a sort of talking point, perhaps in the living room. The madness is catching...
It was this moment, more than anything, on Wednesday that reflected the point when the show format started to feel more familiar and comfortable, like a pair of slightly angry, opinionated scruffy slippers. That listeners seemed incredibly exercised about bread bins on Wednesday also backs this up, surely providing Yapp with a future topic for Culture Wars.
It was also nice, again on Wednesday, to have the people from BBC Upload on, talking about the new creative talent scheme and how you can submit stuff to it. You basically record it on your phone then upload it and it gets watched and shared across the BBC's socials. Plus there's a festival, workshops and other stuff. "This sounds disturbingly warm and supportive" commented Jake.
It has occurred to me that part of the reason why I'm loving this show so much is because it basically occupies the same slot that The Funster Show did on Signal Cheshire in the early 90s* Unwinding serves a similar function, albeit with more sophisticated but equally surreal content: They haven't had an exploding cuckoo clock that went off for three days straight yet, but the jingles and endorsements are in a similar territory. On Signal Cheshire the madness of The Funster Show was enhanced by the fact that the playlist was dominated by the likes of Utah Saints and Altern 8, whereas Unwinding has to work harder to create that energy.
I suppose the big test, for me, will be whether the show format works once I've gone back to work. (If Jake and Laura are reading this: My excuse for not being back at work yet is that the students aren't back in yet, so neither am I. As to What Have You Been Doing To Justify This... Erm, writing this?) as I'll be getting up a lot earlier then and going to bed earlier as well. That said, the gentler tone of The Boring Talks might be as soothing for me as an old episode of Wimsey or Cadfael would have been around the same time.
Jake Yapp's Unwinding is broadcast Monday-Friday, 7pm-10pm on Radio 4Extra throughout January
*A quick google reveals that there were several different versions of The Funster Show, all with the same presenter, broadcast at different times across the Potteries and Cheshire and Greater Manchester on different stations within the Signal Cheshire/Signal Stoke/Piccadilly Radio networks. I'm thinking of the version that was broadcast around about 1991 ish on what was then Signal Cheshire which used to be KFM and was broadcast from Regents House in Stockport.
Image one a screenshot of Jake Japp in the studio
Image two bowl of soup by Victoria Shes on Unsplash
Image three a pair of slippers and stripy socks by Philippe Jausions on Unsplash
Great review of this, to my mind, successful experiment. Having started catching it via the Sounds App it gradually became 'appointment listening' for me. The choice of comedy inserts worked well with John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme but less so with other selections (I'm not a fan of The Pin anyway so they were never going to work for me) and the audiobook choices were not to my taste either and overlong. Other esoteric gems they re-aired included Where To Mate and The Boring Talks. Jake Yapp and Laura Grimshaw have good chemistry and ideas and I hope they're given further opportunities to make Unwinding in the future.
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