Rome and Away: Radio Daze.

Rome and Away with Michael Monkhouse.

Call me old-fashioned. Call me a silly little arse. Call me a sad useless hopeless tossbag with the personality of Berlusconi and the body of John Merrick. But…

Could there be a finer medium for comedy than radio? All the bog-standard techniques of the art – surprise, incongruity, reveal, switching, the switcheroo – work so much more smoothly in audio. Plus, there’s no need for cumbersome, lumbersome cameras, prima donnas whose make-up is simply never quite right, or even turgid tedious rehearsals. Last-minute rewrites are a bit of a bonus, too.

If you don’t agree, may I kindly request you bugger off, because two of Rome’s top comedians do. (Agree, not bugger off.) I’m talking about Marco Presta, who’s fifty-one and Roman, and Antonello Dose, who isn’t. They’re all set to hit the air this September with the eighteenth (!) season of ‘The Roar of the Rabbit’, in which their preferred format is question and answer, which by a staggering coincidence is how I like to interview people too.

Marco insists that comedy is an art of survival, a healthy release of tension when you could kick the hell out of someone instead. It’s hardly bizarre that problem-ridden Napolitans have always tended to the comic, unlike the Germans (‘Too good at solving things’) or Scandinavians (‘Too perfect a system’). Stereotypes apart, Antonello chimes in that things are changing, with observational humour ceding to political satire as politicians become ever more grotesque… And comedians become politicians, most notably Beppe Grillo, the man who makes eighties’ Ben Elton look like the current Ben Elton. And let’s not forget how politicians – like businessmen, professors and men who want to have sex – understand the benefits of inserting the odd – and I mean odd – gag into otherwise yawnsome debates. Personally I think Monti is about as funny as Lady Gaga, but he tries hard.

So, radio. Marco feels another advantage of the medium is its intimacy: you can take everyday subjects from unexpected angles, whilst on telly, everything has to be larger-than-life – grandfathers eating tigers (missed that one), tattooed trannies playing water-polo, I might add a certain young lady inserting a wine bottle into her own intimacy. (And I can’t resist quoting Jimmy Carr: ‘Disgusting… Red wine with fish.’) TV also kids people into believing they can broadcast a poorly-told clanger and become stars for life, especially if they have nice breasts. Radio, Antonello opines, forces you to be tougher on yourself, tighter on the material, more productive in the script department. After all, ‘Talent is like the panda: It’s dying out and no one really knows what it is.’ (Personally I’m not surprised the panda can’t mate. Everyone’s watching.)

Finally, the future? Marco and Antonello agree the fundamentals of comedy haven’t changed – from Ancient Greece through ‘Commedia dell’Arte’ and parody to the trusty old banana skin… But as technology goes, technically speaking, nutty, we comics will have to keep up. There are so many avenues to reach the punters, so many new subjects to explore, so many piss-poor expressions the Italians have imported without knowing what the hell they mean. I’m pleasantly reminded of vintage Jack Dee and his legendary moanings on video-recorders, hi-fis, computers…

Forget the mother-in-law, the tourist, the fatso. There’s a whole new world to enjoy and there can be no funnier way than via these guys.