Comfort Blanket

Comedian John-Luke Roberts picks the 1990 LP by They Might Be Giants (the one that contains their hit single Birdhouse In Your Soul, and 18 other wildly inventive songs) and talks about the idea of ‘too much’, of overwhelm, of an invigorating deluge of ideas, and how that connects the worlds of music and comedy.

Writer and comedian Robin Ince (The Infinite Monkey Cage, Cosmic Shambles Network) talks about the comforts of Carol Reed’s masterpiece The Fallen Idol, the beautiful film he made between Odd Man Out and The Third Man, and touches on the links between film and our memories of loved ones.

Writer Will Maclean (The Apparition Phase) talks about John Carpenter's classic 1982 sci-fi horror film The Thing, and why its tale of gruff short-tempered men failing to deal with an impossible situation in a pitiless white landscape is a comforting place to return to again and again.

Sunday Times bestselling author Beth Morrey (Saving Missy, Lucky Day) talks about Sue Townsend's definitive comic coming-of-age novel The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4.

Comedian and writer Sara Barron (Firecrotch & Normcore, They Like To Watch) celebrates the comforts of 30 Rock, Tina Fey's sitcom skewering of network TV, and the joy of seeing relatable character Liz Lemon surviving and thriving (even if she has lettuce in her hair).

Comedy producer Ed Morrish (Non-Censored, Soundheap, John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme) brings his personal comfort blanket, Ben Stokes' 2019 Ashes innings at Headingley against Australia (and more broadly "all sport") to try and persuade Comfort Blanket umpire Joel that it's allowed - and makes a case for sport as the perfect improvised long-form narrative. It's all about the story...

Actor, comedian and broadcaster Tom Price (Torchwood, Magic FM, My Mate Brought A Toaster) talks about the lifelong comfort he draws from Allo Allo, Perry & Lloyd's broad and shameless French resistance farce. Listen very carefully, we will say this only once: it's actually brilliant.

Writer Naomi Alderman (The Power, The Future) chooses as her comfort blanket, the 1949 Ealing black comedy 'Kind Hearts And Coronets', with its mixture of revenge (served cold, of course), and vicious social satire, managing to possess, one might say, "all the exuberance of Chaucer, without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities of his period..."