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Here's a little promo for the BBC Radio 4 Comedy program "Life: An Idiot's Guide," which was taped at Edinburgh this year. Note the presence of MaxFunPals W. Kamau Bell and Josie Long, and right at the top, a brief snippet of the voice of YOURS TRULY.

Why is my voice in there? Because the producer of the show, one Colin Anderson, knows my STRONG POSITION on recording theater instructions. My policy: if you need someone to record the "turn off your cell phones" message at the beginning of a show, I AM YOUR MAN.

Now, hundreds of arts patrons around the world know about my commitment to the ANNOUNCING ARTS.

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Shortly after Monty Python released "Life of Brian" in 1979, John Cleese and Michael Palin went on BBC2's "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" (a chat show with an opening sequence which suggests that it is ideal post-coital viewing) to defend their work in a debate against author Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the then Bishop of Southwark.  The result was a now somewhat famous broadcast which has been excerpted frequently (as in the documentary footage above from "Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)"), but only rarely presented in its entirety. 

Now, according to the Guardian, BBC4 is making a drama about Python's creation of "Brian" and the troupe's subsequent struggles to defend the film.  The show, "Holy Flying Circus", which will air sometime this autumn, was written by Tony Roche (who also wrote for "The Thick of It") and will focus much of its attention on this odd yet fascinating bit of television history. 

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One of the best films we saw at Sundance this year was Chris Morris' Four Lions. It's a satirical look at a London-based group of terrorists. UK-born terrorists, specifically. In the Q&A after the film, Morris talked about the sheer idiocy of terrorists he'd read about in his research, and he was unflinching in satirizing the would-be murderers. What's most remarkable about the film, though, is that these horrible, horrible doofuses are also quite human. That's a pretty remarkable achievement in my book.

The movie opens in a couple of cities November 5th, and it spreads across the country from there. Don't miss it.

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Hold on! We got bumped because Gordon Brown said something weird. This'll run next week.

This evening (UK time) or afternoon (US time) you can catch me on BBC Radio 4's "The Vote Now Show." I talk with Rep. Richard Martin (R-OH), aka Paul Gilmartin, and his lovely wife Jazz, aka Maria Bamford. Paul and Maria are so amazing as these characters, and the piece is really a lot of fun.

The show runs from 3:00-3:30 this afternoon (pacific time) or 11PM-11:30PM GMT. You can catch the stream here on the Radio 4 page or in iTunes.