Irreverent and informative news podcast

October 9, 2009 10:10 AM

Looking for the news equivalent of the "Football Weekly" podcast.

Is there an audio podcast which does for current affairs what Football Weekly does for football?

If you listen to Football Weekly I hope you'll know what I mean. If you don't the main requirements are that it discusses the news in a fairly irreverent way, but is well informed. Covers all the main stories, and the hosts are allowed opinions of their own. It isn't a "comedy" podcast as such, but the personalities of the presenters will mean it does raise a smile. If it had a political bias in any direction, that would be fine. It would be great if it was UK-centric, but world news would be ok (US-centric would not). Ideally it would last about an hour twice a week.

What I'm not after (if it helps): The News Quiz, Have I Got News For You, The Daily Show.

posted by brighton to technology (2 comments total)

You'll get a bunch of recommendations for Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me for a very good reason: it's excellent.
You should also subscribe to Radio 5's Fighting Talk for sporting news if you haven't already. The Times' Bugle podcast is irreverent and worth trying out too.
For British focused current affairs podcasts, I think R4 has the spotlight with the shows you mentioned above, so I'd be interested in other people's suggestions.
posted by arcticseal at 12:23 PM on October 9

I've looked for similar with little luck. You might get some joy from Nick Campbell's daily news discussion podcast, the tone of Five Live is pretty informal and irreverent when possible, but the format is a phone in discussion rather than a panel.

The aforementioned Fighting Talk is excellent though, and there are a bunch of other great Five Live podcasts such as Mayo and Kermodes Film Review and the Simon Mayo book panel.

As arcticseal says, Radio 4 is the place for news and current affairs podcasts, but they are fairly dry.
posted by fire&wings at 3:58 PM on October 9