Russell Howard is a boyish-looking but experienced standup comedian who rose to television fame on a British panel show, before being given his own programme: Russell Howard’s Good News. Now regularly the most watched show on BBC’s iPlayer and a ratings hit, is he surprised by its success
“It’s baffling. You’re about to get our first series, but we’re up to our eighth – it’s nuts. I thought I’d only do about one or two, then people would get sick of us, but luckily they don’t seem to mind it, so it’s rumbling along.”
“Rumbling along” must be a euphemism for soaring. Clearly another facet of Howard’s appeal is his modesty. And although he presents the show to a live audience in a standup style, it really isn’t about him. Good News is a topical show with an endless source of inspiration: Media current affairs coverage.
“A daft show about the news is the best way to put it. We look at the big and the quirky stories of the week, the way in which the news is presented, then mix it together with standup, sketches, bits of animation. The madness of reality is what makes the best bits so fascinating.
” I think there was a story last year about a Chinese zoo keeper who massaged a monkey’s rear end with his tongue for half an hour (he was helping it overcome a digestion problem). If you’re presented with a story like that, you have to go down a certain avenue, you know what I mean But it’s grounded in reality.”
Although the big news stories tend to be British-centric, the following 20 minutes are taken up with world news. It must take a lot of time keeping track of all this information.
“It’s a real commitment,” Howard says.
“Luckily, I write it with my friends, who are all standups over here. I love that; it’s my favourite part of the whole thing. We’re like a sort of topical equivalent of the A-Team, sitting in this little room and then bursting out at the end of the week.”
The resulting material seems to be broadcast without too much in the way of censorship by a nervous television network.
“The BBC have been great. They don’t say you can’t put this in, or whatever, they just let us get on with it.” No holds barred then
“We’re on quite late really, but I wouldn’t say it’s particularly rude. Nobody in my generation would be upset by it and my parents really enjoy it. It can be quite saucy at times, but it’s always a reflection of what we’ve found, and never knowingly rude.
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“Here’s one: Nicolas Cage apparently refuses to eat animals which don’t have sex with dignity. When we find stories like that, and then run with them; that’s at the heart of Good News.”
Highlighting the bizarre in current affairs is not the whole of the package, however. Each episode has a segment where Howard meets a mystery guest – an otherwise ordinary person who is in the news at that time, and our host has to guess why. From shearing champions to the British women’s gymnastics team, Howard then ineptly joins them in a practical demonstration.
“I had a really enjoyable sword fight with the world’s oldest fencer – a lovely lady, who I think was about 75 and she just kicked the crap out of me, lashing me with this sword. And I got on my knees just pleading with her to leave me alone.”
There are one or two areas where Good News differs from the “Yoof”-targeted programming which it could be fleetingly mistaken for. Howard has great respect for people who have lived much longer lives than himself.
“Very often we have excellent older people who are really talented, really peculiar and don’t have a hint of media training, which just makes them more fascinating. They’re very often the greatest guests and just have a natural authority because they’re older.”
The final segment of each show – It’s not all doom and gloom – highlights an item of positive news. A recent example was the story of 9-year-old Rachel, who asked her friends and family not to give her any birthday presents, but instead to donate $9 each to her project to provide clean drinking water for children in Africa. A month later Rachel was killed in a car accident but when her story spread around the world $1.2 million was eventually donated in her name towards clean water projects in Ethiopia. Not only a moving story, but an illustration of the positive power of news.
How does Howard think the programme will be received by New Zealand viewers
“I don’t know, really, I hope it goes OK. Very often the big stories of the week are British, but we don’t just pick the big stories that are in the news, we pick stories which we think people will find interesting and the aim is firmly on getting as many belly laughs as possible.”
THE DETAILS:
WHAT: Russell Howard’s Good News
WHENL Tuesdays, 9.15pm
WHERE: COmedy Central (Sky 015)
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